Anne Pemberton wrote:
> On an online forum, we are discussin the book The Shakespeare Riots, 
> and a discussent who is either British or Australian, seems surprised 
> that Shakespeare was so well attended in the "antebellum" period. He 
> was under the impression that after the Revolutionary War, Americans 
> tended to discard Shakespeare and consider his works unworthy of study.
>
> Can anyone elighten me as to whether the works of Shakespeare were 
> typically a part of libraries in Virginia between the Revolutionary 
> and Civil Wars?
>
> Thanks muchly for shedding any light on this issue!
>
> Anne
>
> Anne Pemberton
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.erols.com/apembert
> http://www.educationalsynthesis.org 
Anne,

A general answer to your question (i.e., not specific to Virginia but 
covering the whole country) may be found in Lawrence Levine's 
/Highbrow/Lowbrow/.

Doug Deal
History/SUNY Oswego.