Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America, 1780-1850 (Early American Studies) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Recording his famous impressions of America in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville expressed surprise at the pervasiveness of American democracy..." (more)
Key Phrases: rake culture, approaching midcentury, seduction fiction, Magdalen Society, New York, Old School (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

...an important contribution to our understanding of antebellum bourgeois culture... -- Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, January 2007

Review

"Offering keen insight derived from a wide range of sources, from eighteenth-century literature to institutional records, Seduced, Abandoned, and Rebornis important reading for scholars of gender, youth, and class in the early republic."—Journal of the Early Republic

"Politicians, preachers, and pundits prattle about family values, but this lovely little book engages our actual experience of the family as those self-appointed moralists never manage to do. Rodney Hessinger is a gifted historian who catches compellingly the dilemmas with which those who meant to regulate the young had to deal and the strategies they developed to deal with them. Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn is the real deal. It will reorient our understanding of family life in the early American republic."—Michael Zuckerman, University of Pennsylvania

"Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn is an important new study of the cultural history of the early republic; it makes significant contributions to the historical literatures on gender, sexuality, reform, popular culture, and the middle-class in early America. It is built upon a solid base of original archival research, and it offers new perspectives on a wide ranging set of historical questions. Hessinger's book will have a broad appeal for students and scholars across a variety of disciplines."—Bruce Dorsey, author of Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City

"An important contribution to our understanding of antebellum bourgeois culture and the dialectical power plays enacted by its youth and their elders."—Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press; illustrated edition edition (June 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812238796
• ISBN-13: 978-0812238792
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,708,196 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars a model work of cultural history, March 25, 2007

By	hmf22 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I enjoyed this book so much that I nearly wrote to the author to congratulate him. The content is easy for modern readers to relate to: young adults exploring religion and sexuality and occasionally rioting against college authorities. Hessinger skillfully interweaves these themes with the political, economic, and cultural values of the early republic to discover the roots of this generation's apparent crisis. The book is not only a compelling piece of scholarship but also a model of clear, succinct, engaging historical writing. I recommend it highly, with the caveat that it will be best enjoyed by those who are already knowledgeable about the nineteenth-century United States.

5.0 out of 5 stars teenage rebels of early america, September 3, 2005

By	Norah C. Feeny "Norah Feeny" (Cleveland, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

So you think your teenager gives you trouble? Well, get in line with generations of previous Americans! This book shows that young adults produced much anxiety in the decades following American independence. Armed with new notions of equality and finding new opportunities unleashed by market capitalism, youth in the early national era disrupted traditional patterns of courship, churchgoing, and apprenticeship. Effortlessly blending entertaining anecdotes with sophisticated theoretical analysis, Hessinger has written a fascinating book that will appeal to both scholars and a general audience.