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Free items: State guides
Good morning!
The manager of a local public library branch asked me to post this list of
state guides that are being withdrawn from her library. The volumes are
part of the American Guide series written by the Federal Writers' Project in
the 1930's and 40's. (see below for additional information) She has 32
volumes, published between 1938 and 1950 with black and white illustrations.
Each is between 400 and 600 pages, with the usual library stamps, etc. A
list follows.
If you are interested, please contact Barbara Bonney at the Newport Branch
of the Campbell County Public Library. Her email is bbonney@cc-pl.org. She
will send requested volumes to anyone who will pay shipping.
Thanks!
Jennifer
============================================
Jennifer Gregory
Curator, Special Collections and Archives
Northern Kentucky University
(859) 572-5863
gregoryj@nku.edu
============================================
THE LIST:
Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Louisiana
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Washington
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE SERIES:
"The gigantic text in question, the American Guide Series, was written
between 1935 and 1942 by a peak number of 7,535 writers, temporarily put on
the WPA payroll as members of the Federal Writers' Project. In order to
allow for a broad and nationwide enactment of white collar relief, the
federal government chartered the compilation of in-depth guidebooks to each
American state, in the hopes of boosting not only the artists' morale by
allowing them to execute their own craft, but also to provide the nation
with a symbol of cultural strength during a challenging time in history. The
core of the American Guide Series, as I study it in this dissertation, is
comprised of 48 state guidebooks, averaging about 500 pages in length each,
plus territorial guides of Alaska and Puerto Rico, as well as the city
guides of Washington, D.C. and New York City (New York City Guide and New
York Panorama).
"The guidebooks are usually subdivided into general essays covering such
areas as history, art, industry, agriculture, and geography of a state, city
portraits, and automobile tours. The books are generously supplemented with
maps, photographs (often by FSA artists), and drawings. In addition to these
53 volumes, the FWP published hundreds of city guides (e.g., Philadelphia: A
Guide to the Nation's Birthplace and San Francisco: The Bay and Its Cities),
regional guides (e.g., U.S. One, Maine to Florida and The Oregon Trail), and
local guides (e.g., The Berkshire Hills and Death Valley: A Guide). Often
local guides were merely pamphlets of small circulation that contained
information collected during the making of the state guides but were left
out in the process of condensing the massive amounts of information into the
publishable one-volume format."
-- Petra Schindler-Carter, author of
'Vintage Snapshots:
The Fabrication of a Nation in the WPA
American Guide Series'
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pscarter/fwp_intro.html
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