Heart Language

At the turn of the twentieth century, American popular literary magazines and journals pulsed with local-color fiction, seeking to satisfy a national hunger for American identity. Anxiety over increasing numbers of “new stock” immigrants—and the changing face of an industrializing America—gave rise to greater popular interest in stories with a simple focus on localized folk culture and “old stock” immigrant tradition. In the footsteps of writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Sarah Orne Jewett, the Pennsylvania German writings of Elsie Singmaster emerged to great popularity and acclaim.

Born and raised in the Pennsylvania German tradition, Elsie Singmaster wrote extensively over the first half of the twentieth century. Through her intimate knowledge of the community, Singmaster exposed the nation’s expanding readership to Pennsylvania German beliefs, culture, and distinct dialect without denigrating the community or resorting to stereotypes. She believed that the Pennsylvania Germans embodied the best of the nation’s ideals, and she crafted her characters and stories to participate in the national dialogue about immigration, development, and the definition of a hardworking, middle-class sensibility grounded in Old World traditions. While Singmaster’s work fell out of sight as the century wore on, her writings remain a significant contribution to the study of both Pennsylvania German history and culture and the literature of the last century. This volume restores to print sixteen of Singmaster’s short stories, reintroducing these important works into a new context of American development.

“By repositioning Singmaster's stories within the context of women's history and the local-color genre, Susan Colestock Hill breathes new life and possibility into these stories for researchers interested in literature, religious culture and identity, gender issues, or Pennsylvania German heritage. . . . Hill's critical eye draws the whole collection together and clarifies why she chose these particular stories for republication. This book will be a welcome resource and will hopefully introduce Singmaster's work to a new generation of readers.”—Denise D. Kettering, H-Net Reviews

Susan Colestock Hill is a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Charles H. Glatfelter

Preface

Acknowledgments

A Sketch of Elsie Singmaster

Selected Pennsylvania German Short Stories by Elsie Singmaster

Big Thursday

The Vacillation of Benjamin Gaumer

The County Seat

The Old Régime

The Eternal Feminine

The Squire

The Belsnickel

The Suffrage in Millerstown

Zion Church

A Sound in the Night

The Courier of the Czar

The Amishman

Frau Nolte

Wildfire

Settled Out of Court

Thanksgiving Is n’t Christmas

Bibliography of Elsie Singmaster’s Works

Index

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History

           Pennsylvania & Mid-Atlantic

           U.S.

Literary Studies

Pennsylvania & the Mid-Atlantic

           History