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Russel B. Nye (1913–1993)

Author of The Cultural Life of the New Nation, 1776-1830

24+ Works 428 Members 5 Reviews

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Series

Works by Russel B. Nye

The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was (1957) — Editor — 21 copies
Modern Essays (1957) 17 copies

Associated Works

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) — Introduction, some editions — 16,857 copies
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Other Writings (1758) — Editor, some editions — 2,426 copies
The Democratic Experience; a Short American History (1963) — Contributor — 33 copies

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During the antebellum era a series of reform impulses coursed through the nation. From the 1830s to the 1860s, many Americans dedicated themselves to the causes of temperance, education, criminal justice reform, women's rights, and opposition to slavery in an effort to create a more moral and perfect nation. One of the leading voices in these efforts was William Lloyd Garrison, who for over three decades championed the goal of national reform from the pages of his newspaper The Liberator. In this short work Russel Nye provides an account of Garrison's life that assesses his activist career and its place in the broader spectrum of events in mid-19th century America.

As Nye explains, Garrison's rise to prominence required him to overcome considerable personal adversity. The son of a shipping master who abandoned his family, Garrison entered the newspaper profession at a young age through his apprenticeship as a printer. Garrison's religious convictions soon led him to the editorship of a Boston newspaper promoting temperance, and though the journal soon failed, it set Garrison on a cause of lifelong activism. While Nye notes that Garrison promoted a range of reform issues, it was at this point when he embraced the cause that would define his career: the abolition of slavery.

Garrison's embrace of abolition came at an especially unpromising time. By the late 1820s the initial belief that slavery would die out on its own had faded with the expansion of cotton cultivation. Though many advocated for its end, their emphasis was on a gradual phasing out of the "peculiar institution," coupled with recolonization of the freed slaves. By contrast, Garrison's passionate advocacy of immediate and total abolition marked him out as an unfashionable extremist. Initially a marginal figure, the outbreak of Nat Turner's rebellion soon after the launching of Garrison's newspaper The Liberator in 1831 led many Southerners to identify his extremist writings as its cause, giving Garrison a sudden prominence out of all proportion to the limited subscribership of his newspaper. Nye charts this odd duality over the next three decades of his life, showing how Garrison's uncompromising positions often traded broader support for a visibility that ensured him a leading role in the national discourse, one that he would maintain until the final abolition of slavery in 1865.

By situating Garrison within the often complex and ever-shifting politics of the antislavery cause, Nye defines clearly the scope of Garrison's achievements. Though he makes it clear that Garrison was just one voice in the abolition movement, Nye credits his subject with helping to define slavery as a moral issue in a way that contributed to its ultimate demise. It is this combination of detail and nuance that makes Nye's book an excellent introduction Garrison's life, one that still can be read profitably for the insights it provides into the labors of a committed advocate who never lost sight of his goal.
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MacDad | Mar 27, 2020 |
This probably isn't what you think.

See a book that lists Martin Gardner as an editor that is listed as an expanded edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and you'll probably think it's an annotated Wizard.

Sadly, it's not so. There is an annotated Wizard, but it's by Michael Patrick Hearn. And, yes, if you are a fan of L. Frank Baum, you probably want that, because -- in addition to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and a full (maybe too full) set of annotations, the Hearn book has W. W. Densow's illustrations in color, the way they were drawn to be printed. You don't often find the color illustrations, these days.

And, sadly, you won't find them in the Gardner/Nye edition. You get a text of the Wizard, which is fine, but only a small subset of the illustrations, and in black and white, not color. What the Gardner/Nye edition adds is an "Appreciation" by Nye and a medium-length biography of Baum by Gardner.

The appreciation is probably acceptable, although it certainly didn't excite me. The biography is problematic -- for instance, in discussing the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Gardner talks about the army of women led by General Jinjur, and says that the stereotypic view of Jinjur's army probably reflects Baum's view of the Women's Rights movement. But it doesn't. Baum was a firm proponent of women's rights, and as a newspaper editorialist in South Dakota, he had campaigned vigorously for women's suffrage in that state. The reason that Jinjur leads an army of pretty young women is that Baum had an obsession with the theatre -- he hoped to turn The Marvelous Land of Oz into a drama, and to attract audiences, he wanted an army of chorus girls (such as had been included in the stage version of The Wonderful Land of Oz, which was about 10% Baum and 90% the work of the producer/director).

The appreciation and the biography both have a lot of problems like that. They were simply written too early, before Baum criticism and Baum biography became serious subjects and the necessary research had been done. So every part of this book has a better replacement. For the biography of Baum, there are several alternatives; my favorite (I haven't read them all by any means) is Katharine M. Rogers' L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz. A good appreciation can be found in Michael O. Riley's Oz and Beyond. And almost any edition of The Wonderful Wizard.... will have more Denslow illustrations than this book does. As it stands, the Gardner/Nye book is an attempt to stuff three different books into one set of covers. But they just didn't fit.
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½
2 vote
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waltzmn | Nov 25, 2018 |
The first chapter is a short biography and the others are thematic and analytical. Nye wrote a full biography in 1945.

This is from 1964, during a brief period when Washington Square Press was publishing several series of high quality original non-fiction in low-priced mass market paperbacks. The publisher and the editors were slightly overoptimistic. They did not sell well and most of the volumes are about unknown now. I am the first member to list this one.

I collect them as relics of a brief era in publishing.… (more)
½
 
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johnclaydon | 1 other review | Jan 24, 2015 |
comprehensive, influential early work on cultural history
 
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lateinnings | May 21, 2010 |

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