Abstract
Although published in book form from the beginning, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s novel Kavanagh (Boston 1849) participated in the community-based exchange of knowledge and entertainment that characterized mid-century Anglo-American serial circulation. In order to investigate the details of this participation, the present article focuses on one of Longfellow’s main characters, the fictitious Mary Churchill – especially on three points of Kavanagh’s plot at which Mary demands access to recreational mathematics. With her inquisitive behavior, Mary first initiates a dialogue in the service of scientific education, thus echoing the question-and-answer setting of the earliest Anglo-American mathematics journals. Female contributors to these real-life journals may have inspired Longfellow to depict Mary’s suggestion to pose one’s own mathematical problems. The journals’ many geometry examples, finally, are mirrored in Mary’s insistence on probing solutions and thus establishing the pencil as a critical tool for problem solving, mathematical and other.1
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Remarks
- Introducing Serial Circulation: Print Cultures and Periodical Modernities
- Iterative Circulation in Chaucer: Medieval Contexts of Seriality
- Medieval Modes of Reading: The Circulation Culture of Late Middle English Romances from William Caxton’s Press
- “In a course of publications”: Seriality, Public Recognition, and Judith Sargent Murray’s The Gleaner (1792–1798)
- The Laughing Mrs. Churchill: Longfellow’s Kavanagh (1849) and the Earliest Anglo-American Mathematics Journals
- “Life-like Delineations of Real Life”: Illustrating Wilfred Montressor; Or, The Secret Order of the Seven, a New York City Mystery of 1846
- Circulating Superheroes in City Mystery Novels: Prefigurations of a Popular Serial Figure
- The Experiment of Condensed Fiction in the Review of Reviews
- Erasure and Seriality: The “Serial Attitude” in A Humument and Tree of Codes
- Power the Dark Lord Knows Not: The Fractal Serialities of Fanfiction
- Reviews
- Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson (eds.). 2023. Literature and the Senses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xix + 544 pp., 20 illustr., $ 155.
- Martin Procházka (ed.). 2024. From Shakespeare to Autofiction: Approaches to Authorship after Barthes and Foucault. London: UCL Press, 207 pp., 10 figures, £40.00.
- Irmtraud Huber. 2023. Time and Timelessness in Victorian Poetry. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, viii + 288 pp., £ 95.00.
- Arnaud Schmitt (ed.). 2024. Hybridity in Life Writing: Combining Text and Images. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xii + 296 pp., 20 figures, CHF 177.00.
- Richard Müller (ed.). 2024. The Emerging Contours of the Medium: Literature and Mediality. Thinking Media. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, xvi + 501 pp., 17 figures, 4 illustrations, 4 tables, 4 diagrams, £ 90.00.
- Yvonne Reddick. 2024. Anthropocene Poetry: Place, Environment, and Planet. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xiii + 389 pp, € 139.09.
- Ann Rea (ed.). 2024. Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage: Spying Undercover(s). London/New York: Bloomsbury, xi + 235 pp., £ 85.00.
- Susan E. Kirtley. 2021. Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 268 pp., 59 illustrations, $134.95.
- Matthew Scully. 2024. Democratic Anarchy: Aesthetics and Political Resistance in U. S. Literature. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 256 pp., 5 illustr., $ 125.00.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Remarks
- Introducing Serial Circulation: Print Cultures and Periodical Modernities
- Iterative Circulation in Chaucer: Medieval Contexts of Seriality
- Medieval Modes of Reading: The Circulation Culture of Late Middle English Romances from William Caxton’s Press
- “In a course of publications”: Seriality, Public Recognition, and Judith Sargent Murray’s The Gleaner (1792–1798)
- The Laughing Mrs. Churchill: Longfellow’s Kavanagh (1849) and the Earliest Anglo-American Mathematics Journals
- “Life-like Delineations of Real Life”: Illustrating Wilfred Montressor; Or, The Secret Order of the Seven, a New York City Mystery of 1846
- Circulating Superheroes in City Mystery Novels: Prefigurations of a Popular Serial Figure
- The Experiment of Condensed Fiction in the Review of Reviews
- Erasure and Seriality: The “Serial Attitude” in A Humument and Tree of Codes
- Power the Dark Lord Knows Not: The Fractal Serialities of Fanfiction
- Reviews
- Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson (eds.). 2023. Literature and the Senses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xix + 544 pp., 20 illustr., $ 155.
- Martin Procházka (ed.). 2024. From Shakespeare to Autofiction: Approaches to Authorship after Barthes and Foucault. London: UCL Press, 207 pp., 10 figures, £40.00.
- Irmtraud Huber. 2023. Time and Timelessness in Victorian Poetry. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, viii + 288 pp., £ 95.00.
- Arnaud Schmitt (ed.). 2024. Hybridity in Life Writing: Combining Text and Images. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xii + 296 pp., 20 figures, CHF 177.00.
- Richard Müller (ed.). 2024. The Emerging Contours of the Medium: Literature and Mediality. Thinking Media. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, xvi + 501 pp., 17 figures, 4 illustrations, 4 tables, 4 diagrams, £ 90.00.
- Yvonne Reddick. 2024. Anthropocene Poetry: Place, Environment, and Planet. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xiii + 389 pp, € 139.09.
- Ann Rea (ed.). 2024. Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage: Spying Undercover(s). London/New York: Bloomsbury, xi + 235 pp., £ 85.00.
- Susan E. Kirtley. 2021. Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 268 pp., 59 illustrations, $134.95.
- Matthew Scully. 2024. Democratic Anarchy: Aesthetics and Political Resistance in U. S. Literature. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 256 pp., 5 illustr., $ 125.00.