Produced for: PRI/WNYC’s Studio 360
Airdate: June 19, 2004
Excerpt read by Mallory Kasdan
In the middle of the 19th century, cheap wild & sexy commercial fiction became a form all its own — and boomed. These books were called “sensation novels.” George Lippard published several sensation novels including one in 1848 called the Bel of Prairie Eden. In this excerpt set in Texas in the years just before the Mexican war, which lasted from 1846 to 1848, the house of a rich Texan is invaded by his Scottish overseer who’s in league with the Mexican army.
