Cynthia A. Kierner's Books

Scandal at Bizarre

Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Scandal at Bizarre

Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

In the early 1790s Richard Randolph was accused of fathering a child by his sister-in-law, Nancy, and murdering the baby shortly after its birth. Rumors about the incident, which occurred during a visit to the plantation of close family friends, spread like wildfire. Randolph found himself on trial for the crime largely because of the public outrage fueled by these rumors. The rest of the household suffered too, and only Nancy, who later married the esteemed New York statesman Gouverneur Morris, would find any degree of happiness. A tale of family passion, betrayal, and deception, Scandal at Bizarre is a fascinating historical portrait of the social and political realities of a world long vanished.

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260

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813926165

ISBN 13

9780813926162

Beyond the Household

Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Beyond the Household

Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

Much has been written about the "southern lady," that pervasive and enduring icon of antebellum regional identity. But how did the lady get on her pedestal--and were the lives of white southern women always so different from those of their northern contemporaries? In her ambitious new book, Cynthia A. Kierner charts the evolution of the lives of white southern women through the colonial, revolutionary, and early republican eras. Using the lady on her pedestal as the end--rather than the beginning--of her story, she shows how gentility, republican political ideals, and evangelical religion successively altered southern gender ideals and thereby forced women to reshape their public roles. Kierner concludes that southern women continually renegotiated their access to the public sphere--and that even the emergence of the frail and submissive lady as icon did not obliterate women's public role.Kierner draws on a strong overall command of early American and women's history and adds to it research in letters, diaries, newspapers, secular and religious periodicals, travelers' accounts, etiquette manuals, and cookery books. Focusing on the issues of work, education, and access to the public sphere, she explores the evolution of southern gender ideals in an important transitional era. Specifically, she asks what kinds of changes occurred in women's relation to the public sphere from 1700 to 1835. In answering this major question, she makes important links and comparisons, across both time and region, and creates a chronology of social and intellectual change that addresses many key questions in the history of women, the South, and early America.

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Page Count

316

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801484626

ISBN 13

9780801484629

The Contrast

Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic

By: Royall Tyler,Cynthia A. Kierner

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The Contrast

Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic

By: Royall Tyler,Cynthia A. Kierner

“The Contrast“, which premiered at New York City's John Street Theater in 1787, was the first American play performed in public by a professional theater company. The play, written by New England-born, Harvard-educated, Royall Tyler was timely, funny, and extremely popular. When the play appeared in print in 1790, George Washington himself appeared at the head of its list of hundreds of subscribers. Reprinted here with annotated footnotes by historian Cynthia A. Kierner, Tyler’s play explores the debate over manners, morals, and cultural authority in the decades following American Revolution. Did the American colonists' rejection of monarchy in 1776 mean they should abolish all European social traditions and hierarchies? What sorts of etiquette, amusements, and fashions were appropriate and beneficial? Most important, to be a nation, did Americans need to distinguish themselves from Europeans—and, if so, how? Tyler was not the only American pondering these questions, and Kierner situates the play in its broader historical and cultural contexts. An extensive introduction provides readers with a background on life and politics in the United States in 1787, when Americans were in the midst of nation-building. The book also features a section with selections from contemporary letters, essays, novels, conduct books, and public documents, which debate issues of the era.

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158

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814747922

ISBN 13

9780814747926

Inventing Disaster

The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Inventing Disaster

The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

When hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other disasters strike, we count our losses, search for causes, commiserate with victims, and initiate relief efforts. Amply illustrated and expansively researched, Inventing Disaster explains the origins and development of this predictable, even ritualized, culture of calamity over three centuries, exploring its roots in the revolutions in science, information, and emotion that were part of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe and America. Beginning with the collapse of the early seventeenth-century Jamestown colony, ending with the deadly Johnstown flood of 1889, and highlighting fires, epidemics, earthquakes, and exploding steamboats along the way, Cynthia A. Kierner tells horrific stories of culturally significant calamities and their victims and charts efforts to explain, prevent, and relieve disaster-related losses. Although how we interpret and respond to disasters has changed in some ways since the nineteenth century, Kierner demonstrates that, for better or worse, the intellectual, economic, and political environments of earlier eras forged our own twenty-first-century approach to disaster, shaping the stories we tell, the precautions we ponder, and the remedies we prescribe for disaster-ravaged communities.

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Page Count

302

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469652528

ISBN 13

9781469652528

Martha Jefferson Randolph

Her Life and Times

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Martha Jefferson Randolph

Her Life and Times

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello

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Page Count

372

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807835528

ISBN 13

9780807835524

Traders and Gentlefolk

The Livingstons of New York, 1675-1790

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Traders and Gentlefolk

The Livingstons of New York, 1675-1790

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

Including among their number a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the founder of an ironworks, the Livingstons were a prominent family in the political, economic, and social life of colonial New York. Drawing on a rich array of sources, Cynthia Kierner vividly recreates the history of four generations of Livingstons and sheds new light on the development of both the elite ideology they represented and of the wider culture of early America. Although New York's colonial elite have been considered self-interested political intriguers, Kierner contends that the Livingstons idealized gentility and public-spiritedness, industry and morality. She shows how New York's most successful traders became gentlefolk without abandoning their entrepreneurial values, how they forged a distinct culture, and how the Revolution ultimately occasioned the rejection of elite political authority. Traders and Gentlefolk focuses on the lives of four members of the family: Robert Livingston, a Scottish emigrant who, with his wife Alida Schuyler, attained substantial political influence and acquired Livingston Manor; their son Philip, whose outstanding commercial talents secured his descendants' financial security; Philip's son, William, an outspoken civic leader and energetic supporter of American independence; and Robert R. Livingston, a jurist and diplomat whose aristocratic temperament prevented him from playing a vital role in post-Revolutionary politics.

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304

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

150173153X

ISBN 13

9781501731532

The Tory’s Wife

A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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The Tory’s Wife

A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

The Spurgin family of North Carolina experienced the cataclysm of the American Revolution in the most dramatic ways—and from different sides. This engrossing book tells the story of Jane Welborn Spurgin, a patriot who welcomed General Nathanael Greene to her home and aided Continental forces while her loyalist husband was fighting for the king as an officer in the Tory militia. By focusing on the wife of a middling backcountry farmer, esteemed historian Cynthia Kierner shows how the Revolution not only toppled long-established political hierarchies but also strained family ties and drew women into the public sphere to claim both citizenship and rights—as Jane Spurgin did with a dramatic series of petitions to the North Carolina state legislature when she fought to reclaim her family’s lost property after the war was over. While providing readers with stories of battles, horse-stealing, bigamy, and exile that bring the Revolutionary era vividly to life, this book also serves as an invaluable examination of the potentially transformative effects of war and revolution, both personally and politically.

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Page Count

240

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813949939

ISBN 13

9780813949932

Traders and Gentlefolk

The Livingstons of New York, 1675-1790

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Traders and Gentlefolk

The Livingstons of New York, 1675-1790

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Page Count

304

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

150173153X

ISBN 13

9781501731532

Scandal at Bizarre

Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Scandal at Bizarre

Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Page Count

260

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813926165

ISBN 13

9780813926162

Martha Jefferson Randolph

Her Life and Times

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Martha Jefferson Randolph

Her Life and Times

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello

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Page Count

372

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807835528

ISBN 13

9780807835524

Beyond the Household

Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Beyond the Household

Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Page Count

316

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801484626

ISBN 13

9780801484629

Beyond the Household

Women's Place in the Early South, 1700–1835

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Beyond the Household

Women's Place in the Early South, 1700–1835

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

Much has been written about the "southern lady," that pervasive and enduring icon of antebellum regional identity. But how did the lady get on her pedestal—and were the lives of white southern women always so different from those of their northern contemporaries? In her ambitious new book, Cynthia A. Kierner charts the evolution of the lives of white southern women through the colonial, revolutionary, and early republican eras. Using the lady on her pedestal as the end—rather than the beginning—of her story, she shows how gentility, republican political ideals, and evangelical religion successively altered southern gender ideals and thereby forced women to reshape their public roles. Kierner concludes that southern women continually renegotiated their access to the public sphere—and that even the emergence of the frail and submissive lady as icon did not obliterate women's public role.Kierner draws on a strong overall command of early American and women's history and adds to it research in letters, diaries, newspapers, secular and religious periodicals, travelers' accounts, etiquette manuals, and cookery books. Focusing on the issues of work, education, and access to the public sphere, she explores the evolution of southern gender ideals in an important transitional era. Specifically, she asks what kinds of changes occurred in women's relation to the public sphere from 1700 to 1835. In answering this major question, she makes important links and comparisons, across both time and region, and creates a chronology of social and intellectual change that addresses many key questions in the history of women, the South, and early America.

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Page Count

312

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501731548

ISBN 13

9781501731549

Inventing Disaster

The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Inventing Disaster

The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood

By: Cynthia A. Kierner

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Page Count

302

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469652528

ISBN 13

9781469652528

The Contrast

Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic

By: Royall Tyler,Cynthia A. Kierner

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The Contrast

Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic

By: Royall Tyler,Cynthia A. Kierner

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Page Count

158

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814747922

ISBN 13

9780814747926

Book's by Cynthia A. Kierner

Scandal at Bizarre

Scandal at Bizarre

Beyond the Household

Beyond the Household

The Contrast

The Contrast

Inventing Disaster

Inventing Disaster

Martha Jefferson Randolph

Martha Jefferson Randolph

Traders and Gentlefolk

Traders and Gentlefolk

The Tory’s Wife

The Tory’s Wife

Traders and Gentlefolk

Traders and Gentlefolk

Scandal at Bizarre

Scandal at Bizarre

Martha Jefferson Randolph

Martha Jefferson Randolph

Beyond the Household

Beyond the Household

Beyond the Household

Beyond the Household

Inventing Disaster

Inventing Disaster

The Contrast

The Contrast

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