John Dunn Hunter (1798?-1827) was white, but was reared by the Kansas and the Osage from around age two, after his parents were killed by Kickapoo. In 1816, he left his family, eventually living with whites and learning English; and writing this book about his life, the people he knew growing up, and the wonderful landscape in which he lived most of his life. His memoirs provided the basis for “Jumping Rabbit’s Story,” published in Robert Merry’s Museum in 1843.

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The Dictionary of Americanisms went through at least four editions between 1848 and 1877. As a record of the “colloquial language of the United States,” it’s a fascinating look at the words that actually came out of the mouths of early 19th-century Americans. It’s also a window into U. S. history, with tiny essays on early political parties (the Democratic party, for example, was known as the “Loco-foco” after an incident of the kind which won’t surprise observers of the political process), economics (how bears and bulls went to Wall Street), and culture (both strong drink and the Millerites); its collection of quotes offers later readers examples from a wide variety of early-19th-century works (everything from Congressional speeches to Sam Slick in England). And where else will you find discussions of words like “sanctimoniouslyfied” and “absquatulate”? or of phrases like “acknowledge the corn” and “red dog money”?

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The Behaviour Book is more than just a look at mid-19th-century rules of etiquette. Leslie covers the wide range of daily life: four pages are devoted to selecting an umbrella (green silk ones weren’t colorfast); she includes instructions for making a good black ink; and bed-making gets half a page. It’s a chatty book, full of anecdotes (George Washington telling a tall tale to a credulous traveler) and of one-paragraph essays on subjects like having a bedroom window open and how to refer to black servants. (There’s a disengenuous paragraph on a noxious racial epithet.) It’s also a wealth of anecdotal information about Leslie’s native Philadelphia, including a child’s rhyme listing its principal streets. The two chapters on how to treat writers and how to become a writer probably answered questions Leslie had heard over and over.

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“Fanny Fern” was Sara Payson Willis (1811-1872), who by the time Ruth Hall was written was already famous as an essayist; her newspaper essays were published in two popular collections in 1853. Ruth Hall was her first novel (she eventually wrote another, and a novelette), but in theme and tone it’s very much a piece with the newspaper essays: sentimental and satiric. Sara could be devastating, especially, on the subject of families and of family relationships; here, the character of Ruth’s brother—“Hyacinth Ellet”—is based on Sara’s own brother, whom she’d already portrayed as “Apollo Hyacinth” (in the second collection titled Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio). The novel itself is vaguely autobiographical.

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“Gail Hamilton” was Mary Abigail Dodge (1833-1896), an American essayist. In pieces humorous, satirical, and sentimental, Dodge covered domestic subjects, the American Civil War, and women’s rights. Gala Days (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863), is a collection of eight essays—six of which appeared originally in the Atlantic Monthly—on topics serious and frivolous: the family canary, a journey through New York and Canada, young children and women with loved ones fighting the War. She includes a scathing look at cultural expectations of motherhood.

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Writing as “Gail Hamilton,” Mary Abigail Dodge (1833-1896) published at least eight books between 1863 and 1872. Wool-Gathering is the record of her trip through Minnesota and the South in 1866. Part documentary and part philosophical, Dodge’s work describes a nation in transition. Dodge includes descriptions of travel by rail and steamboat, a service in an African-American church, Southern attitudes after the War, and farm life in Minnesota.

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Methodist minister Jonathan Townley Crane (1819-1880) explores the pros and cons (mostly cons) of various forms of recreation in mid-19th-century America, in Popular Amusements (Cincinnati: Jennings & Pye; New York: Eaton & Mains, 1869). Dancing, chess-playing, horse-racing, baseball: all are subjected to scrutiny. From the point of view of the 21st century, the most entertaining chapter in this book is his diatribe against novels—which his son, novelist Stephen Crane, appears to have ignored.

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