Dissertation Information for Ellen Detlefsen NAME: - Ellen Detlefsen
- (Alias) Ellen Gay Detlefsen
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science
SCHOOL:
- Columbia University (USA) (1975)
ADVISORS: - Oliver L. Lilley - Eric L. McKitrick
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - None
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Printing in the Confederacy, 1861-1865: a Southern industry in wartime
Abstract: This dissertation deals With aspects of the history of the printing industry in the southern United States during the American Civil Var, With chapters on labor, presses, type, paper, ink, and the collateral industries of binding, and engraving and lithography. It is nessarilly the history of both a technology and the society in which the techonology at first flourished, then merely survived, and finally died. The evidence presented comes from both primary and secondary sources, With an emphasis on reports emanating from the industry itself-from contemporary articles, editorials, book reviews, and classified advertising in Confederate newspapers, as well as from the books printed by the industry. Some evidence is found in the few manuscripts left by firms or individuals involved With the industry, While the secondary materials provide both eyewitness descriptions and post-war reminiscences.
What emerges from this evidence is the narrative history of an industry that felt keenly both a responsibility for communicating Confederate news and taste, and a patriotiC desire to support the Southern war effort. The printing industry knew many war-related shortages--in both personnel and supplies--and these shortages often meant bankruptcy or dissolution for printing shops and job offices, particularly small and rural ones. The work force, too, fluctuated With the conscription laws and with the approach of the Union armies. The printing industry and its companion industries of book book binding and engraving and lithography thus mirrored many or the larger social problems and issues or of life in the Confederacy:
shortages in supply, the diminishing manpower, a precarious existence in blockaded cities, a seriously inflated economy, and poor quality production.
Specific firms and individuals, end their particular problems, are
documented. Among these are the Memphos Appeal printing shop, the
South Carolina partnership of Evens and Cogswll, the Southern Illustrated News enterprises in Richmond, Virginia, the Superintendent or Public Printing far the Confederate States, the engraver Blanton Duncan, the Richmond, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, Typographical Societies, and the editor/publisher or the Vicksburg, Mississippi, Daily Evening Citizen.
Throughout tbe narrative, the theme of survival is dominant -- the
survival of a few against the odds that brought many involoved with the
printing industry to complete failure. It is remearkable that any portion or the industry was able to continue printing when paper was nearly non-existent, when trained printers were unavailable, when ink and presses and type were missing or broken beyond repair, and When the
military events or the period impinged upon printing shops across the
Confederecy.
Some period photographs and reproductions from the Conferederate
imprints themselves are used to illustrate the dissertation. A
classified bibliography of materials about this part of nineteenth
century American is the final part of the work.
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MPACT Scores for Ellen Detlefsen A = 27
C = 62
A+C = 89
T = 31
G = 2
W = 27
TD = 29
TA = 1
calculated 2012-07-31 16:16:26
Advisors and Advisees Graph
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