'A Lantern in Her Hand' featured at Sept. 23 Olson Seminar
Released on 09/11/2009, at 2:00 AM
Office of University Communications
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
WHEN: Wednesday, Sep. 23, 2009
WHERE: Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q Street
Bess Streeter Aldrich's novel, "A Lantern in Her Hand," the 2009 selection for One Book, One Nebraska, will be the focus of the first Paul A. Olson Seminar in Great Plains Studies of the 2009-10 academic year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Melissa Homestead, Susan J. Rosowski associate professor of English at UNL, will discuss the novel and its regional and national impact Sept. 23 in a seminar titled "Plains Regional Fiction and the National Literary Market: The Case of Bess Streeter Aldrich's 'A Lantern in Her Hand.'" The seminar will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the Great Plains Art Gallery, 1155 Q St. Homestead's talk and a 3 p.m. reception in the gallery are free and open to the public.
Aldrich lived most of her adult life in Elmwood and primarily set her fiction in southeast Nebraska. Homestead will discuss how the author originally believed that only people who lived in the Plains would be sympathetic to her fictional heroine, Abbie Deal, until her New York editor urged her to change her approach and reach beyond her region for readers.
From its 1928 publication, "A Lantern in Her Hand" has attracted readers from across the United States and has remained continuously in print, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Homestead will consider how Aldrich and her New York City publisher, D. Appleton Co., marketed and promoted this Plains regional novel to make it a success in the national literary market in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Two additional Olson Seminars will be presented in the fall semester, each at 3:30 p.m. in the Great Plains Art Museum. They are:
Oct. 21 -- "Ancient Roman Religion and Nebraska Football," Michael Hoff, professor of art and art history, UNL.
Nov. 18 -- "Imperial Layers: How an Indigenous Empire Changed the Course of American History," Pekka Hamalainen, associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of "The Comanche Empire," winner of the fourth-annual Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize from the Center for Great Plains Studies at UNL.