Description
Clio’s Abode in Swedish America consists of twenty-five articles previously published in the Swedish-American Historical Quarterly or its predecessor, the Swedish Pioneer Historical Quarterly. Intended to help celebrate the Society’s 75th anniversary, as well as to commemorate the transition of the Quarterly to an annual publication, the volume highlights some of the finest articles in the Quarterly’s history that also help illuminate the dynamic field of scholarship during that period. This volume was edited by Quarterly editor Mark Safstrom, former editors Byron Nordstrom and Kevin Proescholdt, and Philip Anderson, president and chair of the publications committee. Mark and the Society’s production editor, Sandy Nelson, designed and shepherded the book to publication.
With hundreds of articles over seventy-four years from which to choose, the task of selecting just twenty-five for the new book was daunting. The editors decided that an author could have only one article in the new book, even though, as in the case of former Quarterly editor H. Arnold Barton, some authors have written numerous articles through the years. The editors also selected ten topical areas into which the twenty-five articles fit: Society History, Immigration History and Trends, Culture, Language and Literature, Local and Regional History, Biography and Family History, Women, Religious History, Interethnic relations, and Identity. The volume concludes with a list of the books published or supported by the Society since 1950. This is the first anthology of Quarterly articles since 1979, when H. Arnold Barton edited the volume Clipper Ship and Covered Wagon: Essays from the Swedish Pioneer Historical Quarterly (Arno Press). None of the eighteen articles from Clipper Ship and Covered Wagon are included in the new volume, a further indication of the rich trove of excellent articles that have appeared in the Quarterly over the years.