When Private Talk Goes Public

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 “They make one very handsome Mirkin amongst them”: Gossip and Church Politics in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Virginia

Chapter 3 “The Time When There Was So Much Talk of the Witchcraft in This Country”: Gossip and the Essex County Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

Chapter 4 Governed by Gossip: The Personal Letters and Public Purpose of Philip Ludwell in Early-Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Chapter 5 The Infamous Anne Royall: Jacksonian Gossip, Scribbler, and Scold

Chapter 6 “Gadding,” “Gainsaying,” and Negotiating Gossip in the Antebellum Black Press

Chapter 7 Gossip Law

Chapter 8 Diplomacy and Gossip: Information Gathering in the US Foreign Service, 1900–1940

Chapter 9 “As Told By Helen Ferguson”: Hollywood Publicity, Gender, and the Public Sphere

Chapter 10 Gossip in the Women’s Pages: Legitimizing the Work of Female Journalists in the 1950s and 1960s

Chapter 11 The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics

Chapter 12 Gossip Goes Mainstream: People Magazine, the National Enquirer, and the Rise of Personality Journalism