“Bunyan's Progress: Out of the Northwoods and into the Mainstream.”
Michael Edmonds
Head of Digital Collections & Web Services
Library-Archives Division
Wisconsin Historical Society
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
12:00 Noon - 1:00 p.m.
SLIS Commons
4207 Helen C. White Hall
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Michael Edmonds has been on the staff of the Wisconsin Historical Society since 1982, and taught at SLIS as an adjunct instructor since 1986. For the last decade, he has headed the efforts of the Society's library and archives to publish historical documents on the Web. His book, Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan, came out in October 2009. This book answers questions such as, How did the private jokes of 19th-century lumberjacks travel from isolated wilderness logging camps into the children's section of every public library?
He will recount the saga of lies, hoaxes, thefts, and greed that established Paul Bunyan as America's best-known folk hero. Along the way, he'll discuss how printing and publication forever changed the oral tales born in the forest, and share some of the earliest authentic Bunyan tales told by Wisconsin lumberjacks in the 1880s and 1890s.
Supported by the Center for the History of Print Culture, The School of Library and Information Studies, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Department of History, and the Wisconsin Print Culture Society.
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