Humor of the Old Southwest - 3rd Edition by Hennig Cohen & William B Dillingham (Paperback)

About the Book

One of the most entertaining genres of American literature is the bold, masculine, wildly exaggerated, and highly imaginative frontier humor of the Old Southwest, produced between 1835 and 1861. Cohen and Dillingham have tapped the wealth of this region to produce a collection that has become the standard anthology of Old Southwestern humor.

Book Synopsis

One of the most entertaining genres of American literature is the bold, masculine, wildly exaggerated, and highly imaginative frontier humor of the Old Southwest, produced between 1835 and 1861 in an area that extended from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia westward to Lousiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas. Hennig Cohen and William B. Dillingham have tapped the wealth of this region to produce a collection that over the last three decades has become the standard anthology of Old Southwestern humor.

This new, extensively revised edition includes an expanded introduction, a dozen replacement sections, an updated bibliography, and works by three new writers--Phillip B. January, Matthew C. Field, and John Gorman Barr. Most generously represented are George Washington Harris, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, and Thomas Bangs Thorpe. Selections from twenty-five authors are featured along with brief biographical essays that combine historical and political analysis with perceptive literary criticism. These selections document important facets of antebellum American culture and provide the background of the literary achievement of Mark Twain and William Faulkner.

Review Quotes

The rich, ripe garden of the Old South humor is all here.

--Alabama Review

About the Author

WILLIAM B. DILLINGHAM is Charles Howard Candler Professor of American Literature at Emory University. His books include An Artist in the Rigging: The Early Work of Herman Melville and Melville's Short Fiction, 1853-1856 (both Georgia).