Hello and welcome to Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature, a collection of readings prepared at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio. Each installment includes both a nineteenth-century text and supporting materials such as an introduction and a bibliography. These supporting materials will help twenty-first-century readers to understand and better appreciate the nineteenth-century material presented.

These readings were selected mainly for their appeal to readers today. Most are from Ohio magazines and newspapers from a time when news reporting was often more creative and colorful than professional. This series is edited by Jon Miller. More information about Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature can be found in the links on the sidebar.

In a famous introduction to one of his books, Nathaniel Hawthorne contrasted the pleasure of reading old books with the pleasure of reading old newspapers: "[None of the old books in the library], strange to say, retained any sap, except what had been written for the passing day and year, without the remotest pretension or idea of permanence. There were a few old newspapers . . . which re-produced, to my mental eye, the epochs when they had issued from the press, with a distinctness that was altogether unaccountable. It was as if I had found bits of magic looking-glass among the books, with the images of a vanished century in them." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Old Manse" (1846)

ISSN 2577-1302