Katz's Unofficial Index to Antebellum New York City Newspapers
Katz's Notes on Antebellum New York City Newspapers
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In researching my book on the politics of art criticism, I accumulated notes and photos of hundreds of newspapers. Some of these newspapers are available online, but searching them returns imperfect results. While my notes are themselves imperfect, if you are interested in an artist, author/editor, or exhibition in NYC from 1833-1861, a search here may turn up info you would not readily find elsewhere. If you click on the "Katz's Notes" link, it will take you to an alphabetical list of all the newspapers, and clicking on a title will take you to my notes for it. You can then search within that title. You can also search across all the materials here by using the search bar in the menu at the left. I recommend in either case abbreviated keywords (e.g. search Edmond instead of Francis Edmonds) to sidestep typos and period spellings. |
Humbug: The Politics of Art Criticism in New York City's Penny Press (Fordham University Press, 2020). And here is a brief introduction to the book that explores the cover's source in the weekly Lantern. I had to cut aboout 50,000 words from the manuscript; some of the unpublished sections can be found here: Introduction; Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6; Conclusion. |
| The "Browse Collections" link will take you to a list of newspapers for which I have photos. For exhibition reviews, for example, my notes may not include the names of all the artists mentioned in the review, so it might be worth consulting these photos of the actual newspaper pages. Clicking on Items within a collection will take you to those photos. The "Browse Items" links to all the photos I've uploaded, identified by date and newspaper. |
One of the artists featured in Humbug!, William Walcutt, became the subject of another book:
A True American (Fordham, 2022). And Hiram Powers also appears in an unpublished Proceedings paper on parallels with Italian sculpture and politics. |
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If you cite information or sources obtained here, I would appreciate it if you would identify this site (not just the newspaper and date) in your citation, to help spread the word to others. I have also posted an unpublished 2018 talk on newspaper parodies of Walt Whitman on this site, since it discusses the editorial relationships of these newspapers. |
If you have any questions, would like to contribute your own notes or photos, or would simply like to correct typos or other errors, please contact me at wkatz2@unl.edu. Thank you to Liz Lorang for guiding me through Omeka, and David Bagby for help with all things Mac. |
