{"id":240,"date":"2011-03-16T08:46:53","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T12:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/watkinson.wp.trincoll.edu\/?p=240"},"modified":"2015-08-12T15:42:01","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T15:42:01","slug":"early-american-alternate-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/2011\/03\/16\/early-american-alternate-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Early American alternate history"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2011\/03\/Jencks.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-241\" src=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2011\/03\/Jencks.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"186\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2011\/03\/Jencks.jpg 1656w, http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2011\/03\/Jencks-186x300.jpg 186w, http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2011\/03\/Jencks-636x1024.jpg 636w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 186px) 100vw, 186px\" \/><\/a>In the Watkinson we have a copy of <em>Memoir of the Northern Kingdom<\/em>, by William Jenks, possibly the first American fantasy tale.\u00a0 It appears from its title-page to be a collection of letters written from the Rev. William Jahnsenykes to his son in 1872, and published in 1901 in \u201cQuebeck.\u201d\u00a0 This was actually written by Jenks (1778-1866), and published in Boston in 1808.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0Funky?\u00a0 Oh yeah.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0This is a fantasy satire on Jeffersonian politics and a rare example of early American fantastic fiction, cast as an epistolary history, in which the United States has split into three nations: a Northern Kingdom (New England, New York, and Canada) ruled over by an English viceroy (New England joins the Northern Kingdom after a war with Virginia); a francophone Southern slave-holding kingdom ruled by a branch of the Bonapartes; and the Illinois Republick, which alone retains the principles of the American Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0For a fuller account of this publication and of Jenks, see the blog by the redoubtable Jeremy Dibbell at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which has Jenks\u2019s papers:\u00a0( <a href=\"http:\/\/www.masshist.org\/blog\/454\">http:\/\/www.masshist.org\/blog\/454<\/a> )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Watkinson we have a copy of Memoir of the Northern Kingdom, by William Jenks, possibly the first American fantasy tale.\u00a0 It appears from its title-page to be a collection of letters written from the Rev. William Jahnsenykes to his son in 1872, and published in 1901 in \u201cQuebeck.\u201d\u00a0 This was actually written by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}