Nine of the 192 Union military hospitals during the Civil War circulated newspapers edited and printed by convalescents. The horrors of wound infection and amputation were reported in the words of surgeons, nurses and patients. Sermons cautioned against drink, tobacco and profanity while stressing patriotic sacrifice. Those who experienced the war wrote about it in simple narratives, and these are extensively quoted. Convalescent life was painful and terrifying. Bedridden for months with fever and festering wounds, disabled veterans wondered who would respond to their needs. Who would hire them? Who would marry them? This book covers the founding and development of nine hospital newspapers, each fully explored for such topics as patriotism, politics, religion, satire, romance and marriage, battlefield experience and treatment of prisoners of war.

This book is a cultural history of the nineteenth-century songster: pocket-sized anthologies of song texts, usually without musical notation. It examines the musical, social, commercial and aesthetic functions songsters served and the processes by which they were produced and disseminated, the repertory they included, and the singers, printers and entrepreneurs that both inspired their manufacture and facilitated their consumption. Taking an international perspective, chapters focus on songsters from Ireland, North America, Australia and Britain and the varied public and private contexts in which they were used and exploited in oral and print cultures.