The mass production of old New England

This dissertation argues that an idea of "Old New England" developed in American print culture in the nineteenth century as a fantasy that eased New England's entry into industrial capitalism. At the heart of this is the interplay of labor and leisure. By describing the leisure activities of their writers, readers, and players, print pastimes---such as books, magazines, and games---encourage a performative regionalism, producing leisure as a conceptual realm distinct from industrial labor and positioning an idea of the region within that conceptual space. Each of the dissertation's chapters examines a situation in which the lines separating labor and leisure are unclear, and a text steps in to clear up that confusion. Chapter One argues that children's autobiographies establish antebellum New England as a site of childhood fun. Chapter Two argues that mass-produced games downplay labor by representing it as pleasurable. Chapter Three argues that the Lowell Offering, a magazine written by women working in the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills, describes workers' time off the clock as ongoing regional leisure. These texts map New England as a fantasy of stability and racial homogeneity in response to industrialism and immigration. Performative regionalism, I argue, effaces industrial labor in nineteenth-century textual constructions of New England.