Album of Newspaper Clippings -- Showing Life, Interests, and Passions of a Young Woman in Rural Connecticut in the 1880s

Vernon, Connecticut, 1880. Poor to fair. Binding worn with cracked hinges, toning inside with staining, the occasional short tear or loose clipping.. An album of newspaper clippings compiled by what appears to be one individual in Connecticut (most likely Vernon or Tolland) in the 1880s. Each of the clippings has been pasted onto the pages of a bound "Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture" dated 1881. The clippings range in subject, but paint a distinct picture of the compiler and show consistent threads of thought and theme. Clippings are mostly poetry with following themes: love and friendship; holiday (e.g. Easter or Christmas tidings); mourning; patriotism and American pride (e.g. ode to General Grant); humor; religion and morality; domesticity and family; rural and farm life; marriage (i.e. how to keep a marriage strong); and women's interest. Includes a couple brief obituaries gesturing towards the compiler's social network (in Vernon and environs). Notable figures quoted in the clippings are William Cullen Bryant, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Includes brief biographies of Frederick Douglass and Conductor Henry Vanness (the only Black train conductor in the country at the time). Nearly every single page is filled with clippings, providing rich fodder for those interested in the internal life of who we presume was a young woman living in Vernon, Connecticut in the 1880s. Single vol. (9.25" by 5.75"), approx. 700 pp., nearly all filled with clippings, in contemporary cloth binding.