邮局如何塑造了美国文学

安妮·罗亚尔身无分文. Following the death of her husband William in 1812, her in-laws claimed his estate and left her with virtually nothing. Royall may have been poor, single, and in her 50s, but she was resourceful. She eventually wound up traveling the country on U.S. Postal Service–owned stagecoaches on a shoestring, recording what she saw and making history as one of the country’s first female journalists. “这是一个非常精明的策略,克里斯蒂·波特洛夫说, an assistant professor of English at 电子游戏软件. “The post office really underwrote her entire career.”

In fact, as Pottroff has explored in her research, the U.S. Postal Service was instrumental in the careers of many 19th-century writers, 尤其是被边缘化的人. 这是一种常见的交通工具, Pottroff说, in part because hitching a ride with a USPS stagecoach was affordable. This facilitated the advent of a popular genre in American literature at the time, travel writing. “Anyone who did travel writing in the early 19th century was most likely writing in the seat of the stagecoach that was delivering the 邮件,”她说。.

罗亚尔就是这些作家之一, even though riding a stagecoach must have been “terrifying” for a single woman at the time, Pottroff说. Everywhere Royall went, she interviewed locals, and then she wrote books—Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States, 阿拉巴马来信等等——关于她的旅行. 因为它们太长了, her books were too expensive to sell through the 邮件, so she loaded them in a trunk and sold them around the country using the same stagecoach routes.

But the USPS did more than transport writers: it helped to disseminate their literature. While Royall’s contemporaries such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville—both wealthy white men—had access to publishing houses that could 打印 and distribute long works, 其他人都得有创意. If you were a writer looking to distribute your work for cheap, 邮寄分发, 在短时间内, 是该走的路吗.

这就是为什么, when the Black author Henry “Box” Brown decided to circulate his life’s story, 他以邮寄小册子的形式这样做了. (巧合的是, he got the nickname “Box” for 邮件ing himself to freedom from Richmond to Philadelphia in a box.) “He was able to 邮件 his narrative and share his experience by writing a story that fit the parameters of the post office itself,波特罗夫说. And when the famed essayist Judith Sargent Murray couldn’t find an established publisher to 打印 her books, 她写的文章比较短, 信, and plays that ran in newspapers and magazines delivered by the USPS.

Whether writers were using the post office for transportation or distribution, they found themselves limited to places where post offices existed. Luckily, as the 19th century progressed, so did the postal service’s expansion plans. By the end of the Civil War, there were 37,000 post offices in the United States. It wasn’t quite the reach of broadband internet, but nearly everyone in the country was eventually connected to each other, 不管他们是什么种族, 性别, 或者社会地位. “回顾19世纪, we see a lot of innovative ways the post office was used to facilitate broad public good,波特罗夫说. “We may not use the postal service for travel anymore—or even use it for 邮件. But when you read one of the great American storytellers, its influence is felt.”