Dawson, Melanie, 1967-

Laboring to play : home entertainment and the spectacle of middle-class cultural life, 1850-1920 / Melanie Dawson. - Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, c2005. - x, 257 p. ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-247) and index.

Labor, leisure, and the scope of ungenteel play -- Dramatic regression : the borrowed pleasures and privileges of youth -- The social body and the severed head : the cultural work of grotesque play -- Skills rewarded : women's lives transformed through entertainment -- Staging disaster : turn-of-the-century entertainment scenes and the failure of personal transformation -- Old games, new narratives, and the specter of a generational divide -- Imagined unity : entertainment's communal spectacles and shared histories.

0817314490 (cloth : alk. paper)


Middle class--History--Recreation--United States--19th century.
Leisure--History--United States--19th century.


United States--Social life and customs--19th century.

GV53 / .D39 2005

790.1/0973/09034

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