Literature Network » Horace Walpole

ALLEN WALKER READ, AMERICAN SCHOLAR*

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From: et Cetera
Date: 20041201
Author:Bailey, Richard W

SERENDIPITY, as Horace Walpole explained in 1754, is the happy capacity people have "of making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." Serendipity was the hallmark of Alien Walker Read's career as a scholar. Long before the fashion for the "anthropology of everyday life," he was seeking out cultural history in the most obvious places - ones that others overlooked because the evidence was in plain view. Historians had read colonial American newspapers for the great events of the day; Read noticed the advertisements for runaways and discerned something ...

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