Book/Printed Material Image 1 of A new home--who'll follow? or, Glimpses of western life.

About this Item

About this Item

Title

  • A new home--who'll follow? or, Glimpses of western life.

Other Title

  • New home--who'll follow?
  • Glimpses of western life

Summary

  • Caroline Matilda (Stansbury) Kirkland (1801-1864) was a middle-class white woman with a literary bent who moved with her husband and children to the woods of Michigan in the mid-1830s to settle a newly-planned village. In this book, first published in 1839, she offers what she claims to be "an honest portraiture of rural life in a new country" (p. 5). Through a series of vignettes and anecdotes strung loosely into a narrative, Kirkland brings to life the social and material culture of a community on what was perceived as the frontier, presenting her experiences with a sense of ironic amusement. She reveals much about social life, social roles and behavior, especially among women. She describes the business of settlement, including how land was purchased and towns planned, and the haste, confusion, speculation and fraud attendant on such transactions. She comments on the social shifts pioneer life made possible, especially the egalitarianism which poorer migrants claimed as their right in new settlements, and the tensions that resulted as migrants from wealthier classes struggled to maintain and adapt the ways of status and culture they had formerly known. Her narrative also dwells on the details of domestic life, showing how houses were constructed and furnished, depicting the difficulties of housekeeping in crudely-built settlements, and the physical challenges of disease, accidents, bad roads, and the exhausting labor of deforestation and new farming. For all its light-hearted tone, Kirkland's book suggests much about how human communities bound together by neighborhood and necessity began to coalesce in a challenging and drastically changing land.

Names

  • Kirkland, Caroline M. (Caroline Matilda), 1801-1864.

Created / Published

  • New York, C.S. Francis & Co.; Boston, J.H. Francis, 1855.

Headings

  • -  Frontier and pioneer life--Fiction

Genre

  • Western stories

Medium

  • 298 p. front., plates. 19 x 12 cm.

Call Number/Physical Location

  • PZ3.K635 N5 PS2191

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 07013207

Online Format

  • image
  • pdf

Additional Metadata Formats

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress is not aware of any U.S. copyright protection (see Title 17, U.S.C.) or any other restrictions in the materials in the Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910 materials. The Library of Congress is providing access to these materials for educational and research purposes. The written permission of the copyright owners and/or other rights holders (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

Credit Line: Library of Congress, General Collections and Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Further copyright information is also available at American Memory and Copyright.

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Kirkland, Caroline M. A new home--who'll follow? or, Glimpses of western life. New York, C.S. Francis & Co.; Boston, J.H. Francis, 1855. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/07013207/.

APA citation style:

Kirkland, C. M. (1855) A new home--who'll follow? or, Glimpses of western life. New York, C.S. Francis & Co.; Boston, J.H. Francis. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/07013207/.

MLA citation style:

Kirkland, Caroline M. A new home--who'll follow? or, Glimpses of western life. New York, C.S. Francis & Co.; Boston, J.H. Francis, 1855. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/07013207/>.