It's no secret that New England has inspired a lot of writers- and a lot of writing.
Over the past 400 years, hundreds of books have dissected nearly every aspect of the region's history, geography, people and culture.
But no single reference work has attempted a comprehensive picture of all six New England states.
Now, a pair of scholars from UNH has filled the gap with a massive new work, the Encyclopedia of New England.
NHPR's humanities reporter Kevin Gardner has more.
GARDNER: IT TOOK THIRTEEN YEARS TO ASSEMBLE.
ALMOST A THOUSAND WRITERS CONTRIBUTED TO IT.
ITS 1600 PAGES ARE CRAMMED WITH 1300 SEPARATE ENTRIES AND MORE THAN 500 MAPS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHOTOGRAPHS.
IN IT, YOU'LL FIND EVERYTHING FROM THE MASSACHUSETTS 'SACRED COD' TO THE MAINE COON CAT, FROM THE DEVASTATING "YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER" TO WHAT THE "L.L." IN L. L. BEAN STANDS FOR.
IT'S THE BRAND NEW ENCLYCOPEDIA OF NEW ENGLAND, THE BRAINCHILD OF UNH PROFESSORS BURT FEINTUCH AND DAVID WATTERS.
FEINTUCH, A FOLKLORIST IS DIRECTOR OF UNH'S CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES.
HE SAYS PART OF THE INSPIRATION FOR THE ENCYCLOPEDIA WAS THE FACT THAT NOTHING LIKE IT EXISTED.
FEINTUCH (:58) New England is such a powerful place in the American imagination that there's a great deal of literature about it, but for whatever reason there is not a sort of synthesizing volume about this place. There is not a large reference work that looks at the whole place -
WATTERS: (2:09) Well, you know I think the last person who really tried to do it was Cotton Mather back in 1702…
GARDNER: CO-EDITOR DAVID WATTERS:
WATTERS:….. ……and since then there are so many other great historians, and there have always been wonderful guides to individual states and histories of individual states…..and I think for that reason people hadn't really thought they needed to do the whole region, to really think about how it all came together.
GARDNER: WATERS AND FEINTUCH ORGANIZED THEIR ENCYCLOPEDIA TO DO EXACTLY THAT.
THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE CONTEXT AND PERSPECTIVE SO THAT READERS CAN SEE TODAY'S NEW ENGLAND IN LIGHT OF ITS LONG PAST.
DAVID WATTERS USES MARTHA STEWART AS AN EXAMPLE.
WATTERS: (10:10) what I thought was particularly resonant about her was how she took New England domesticity, and really found a way to market that. And that's been a way that women in New England have made a real name for themselves. Think back to Sarah Josepha Hale, edited Godey's Ladies Book, the most popular media publication of the 19th century, gave us the national holiday of Thanksgiving based on the New England model, or Fanny Farmer, the Boston Cooking School cookbook which gave us that notion of cookery you could do for yourself in your own kitchen.
GARDNER: HISTORICAL CONTEXT ISN'T THE ENCYCLOPEDIA'S ONLY GOAL.
THE BOOK IS ALSO A TROVE OF LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND.
CO-EDITOR BURT FEINTUCH SAYS EVEN HE WAS SURPRISED AT SOME OF THE ITEMS THE BOOK CONTAINS.
FEINTUCH: (13:42 I would marvel as I went through it, saying gee, I didn't know this, I didn't know that, and there are hundreds, probably thousands, of facts in it that people won't know about what was invented here, or who grew up here, that this was the home of Malcolm X, that Lewis Farrakhan was a calypso singer in Boston for a time, that…. Lowell is the second-largest Cambodian community in the United States…..one of the facts that people seem to be drawn to….is that the Vermont Legislature declared war on Germany before Pearl Harbor and before the United States went to war. There's a lot of fascinating information here that I think adds up to a,… to the complexity and appeal of this part of the world.
GARDNER: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA IS ORGANIZED IN SECTIONS, BY TOPIC, EACH WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
SOME OF THE SECTIONS ARE PREDICTABLE: AGRICULTURE, FOR EXAMPLE, OR TOURISM.
OTHERS LOOK FOR NEW ENGLAND ALONG ROADS PERHAPS LESS TRAVELED-- ETHNIC AND RACIAL IDENTITY, FOR INSTANCE, OR IMAGES AND IDEAS.
INDIVIDUAL ENTRIES ARE HEAVILY CROSS-REFERENCED IN THE BOOK'S COPIOUS INDEX.
FOR EXAMPLE, WHILE YOU'LL CERTAINLY ENCOUNTER HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW IN LITERATURE, YOU'LL ALSO FIND HIM IN FOLKLIFE, IN MARITIME NEW ENGLAND, AND IN MEDIA.
SIMILAR CROSS-POLLINATION INFORMS THE ENCYCLOPEDIA'S TREATMENT OF LARGER CONCEPTS.
DID YOU KNOW, FOR INSTANCE, THAT NEW ENGLAND'S RENOWNED COMMITMENT TO PUBLIC EDUCATION HAS LEGISLATIVE ROOTS IN THE PURITANS' STRUGGLE WITH THE DEVIL?
DAVID WATTERS EXPLAINS THE "OLD DELUDER SATAN ACT" -
WATTERS: (6:48) Well, that's the name that was given to the first act for public education in 1647 because the Old Deluder Satan used ignorance to take people away from the truth of the book, the Bible, so that you had to have people who could read it for themselves. Also, the Old Deluder Satan sowed discord among people with their opinions, and the only way to balance opinion with fact was through reading, and that really became the model…..
GARDNER: AND FROM THOSE ORIGINS DICTATED BY RELIGIOUS VALUES, DAVID WATTERS ARGUES, EDUCATION BECAME CENTRAL TO THE FORMATION OF OUR REGION'S IDENTITY.
WATTERS: (1653) ….it's made a region without much natural resources extraordinarily successful, it's made a place without much base of wealth to support culture one of the great cultural places in the country.
GARDNER: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW ENGLAND IS, IN FACT, A CHRONICLE OF THE REGION'S CULTURE OVER NEARLY 400 YEARS.
A FEW NEW ENGLAND MYTHS GET THEIR COMEUPPANCE ALONG THE WAY.
NO, THOSE LITTLE POSTCARD VILLAGES WEREN'T ALWAYS SO TIDY, OR SO WHITE;
AND THE MAINE COON CAT IS NOT A HYBRID OF THE HOUSECAT AND THE RACCOON.
BUT, TOPIC BY TOPIC, DETAIL BY DETAIL, THE BOOK'S HISTORICAL SWEEP REVEALS THE CONTINUITIES, AND THE CONTRADICTIONS, OF LIFE IN THE SIX NORTHEASTERN STATES.
IT ALSO MAKES CLEAR HOW MUCH THINGS HAVE CHANGED. BURT FEINTUCH:
FEINTUCH: (12:14) This is a region that's always changed, of course, and it was once the most ethnically diverse part of the country, was once the most industrialized part of the country, it's a place that's always emerging and always changing. We certainly wanted to capture that, both in the present moment and through the region's history.
GARDNER: NOT ALL THOSE CHANGES HAVE BEEN POSITIVE.
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA ALLOWS READERS TO TRACE THE REGION'S AGRICULTURAL, POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL DECLINES, AND TO GRASP SOME OF THE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES THAT LIE AHEAD.
STILL, DAVID WATTERS POINTS OUT THAT NEW ENGLAND STILL HAS SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE NATION IT HELPED SHAPE CENTURIES AGO.
WATTERS: (18:19) …we have a historic landscape that gives great value. And it's not just that it becomes a tourist enclave, it also suggests that people can find community here. You can still say "New England", and it means the six states and that people understand that it means something to be a New Englander, that the climate, the geography, shapes people old and new who are in the region, and you know, I think the great challenge for the 21st century is going to be to retain a sense of identity, a sense of culture, a sense of community, and we've got a good history on that.
GARDNER: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW ENGLAND - ALL EIGHT POUNDS AND 1600 PAGES OF IT - IS ON SALE IN BOOKSTORES NOW.
AND THE "L. L." IN L. L. BEAN?
IT STANDS FOR LEON LEONWOOD.
FOR NHPR NEWS, I'M KEVIN GARDNER.
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