One of the wonders of printed material is its persuasive power. It can threaten, promise, cajole, and insinuate ideas of lasting influence. Such influence manifests itself in a number of ways, but perhaps one of the most obvious is found in the development of national mythologies. For example, consider the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree, a deed he then nobly confesses with the now- immortal words, “I can't tell a lie.” It is a story that has become synonymous with George Washington, yet it was a fable created by Parson Weems in his tremendously popular biography of the first president.

True or not, such stories reveal a great deal about a culture's thought and life. This volume gathers popular stories that tap into a wide range of nineteenth- century American self- perceptions, fears, dreams and longings. The nineteenth century is particularly important for such stories because it was a period when these tales increasingly reached their audience in printed forms, as the highly oral culture of the eighteenth century was giving way to a more print- bound culture. This change meant that ever- wider audiences could gain access to, and be influenced by, the same information. In the nineteenth century, the world of American citizens was increasingly formed, framed and fractured by the power of print.

Behind the growing print culture found in the nineteenth- century United States stood the fact that American publishing came of age in this century. Whereas printed material had been relatively scarce at the close of the eighteenth century, with most families owning perhaps a Bible and an almanac, by the time of the Civil War thousands of tracts, novels, self- help books, tour guides, magazines and newspapers were littering American parlors. Publishers at the turn of the nineteenth century rarely produced print runs over two thousand copies. By mid- century, American publishing had so radically changed that editions of 30,000, 75,000 or even 100,000 copies were common. The forty newspapers published during the American Revolution gave way by the 1860s to more than two thousand daily and weekly papers.