5.3: Urban Popular Culture, the Penny Press, and the New Social Order
This essay details the changes in newspaper production with the rise of the Penny Press and also explains the emergence of urban mass culture. While many authors during this time attempted to draw together diverse audiences by uniting disparate elements of American culture, they also delineated themselves from what they saw as an undisciplined and unrefined subculture. As such, authors like Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, Dickinson, and Melville prefigured the further division of elite and mass culture that came to define much of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth literary and cultural debates.
The US was experiencing profound economic changes during this time, and those changes led to equally important social and cultural transformations. The formation of distinct classes, especially in the rapidly industrializing North, was one of the most striking developments. The unequal distribution of newly created wealth led to divisions along class lines. Perhaps most interestingly, the middle class began to form during this period. Read this essay to learn about these important changes in culture.
Watch the introductory video and explore this website to discover more about P.T. Barnum, one of the most well-known Americans and collectors of popular culture during this period. Don't miss the "Classroom" link. You will find an abundance of essays and information available here to help you better understand Barnum's role in making culture.
Blackface minstrelsy arose during this period. Read this essay to understand what it entailed and why it became so popular.