1920s American English / Victoria Woodhull

padnar said:

Hi ,
I am Padma and I am writing a play about Victoria Woodhull.
She lived in 1920's in America

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She was born in 1838 and died in 1927, so it's unlikely that she would have spoken the slang of the 1920s.

If you want to know the slang and vernacular of the 1850s and 1860s, I recommend reading books written in that era.

Is there a county historical society near you? They may have personal correspondence, journals, and other primary sources that could get you what you need.

TerzaRima said:

Is there a county historical society near you? They may have personal correspondence, journals, and other primary sources that could get you what you need.

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Padma lives in India, if I recall correctly, so she'd need to find primary sources she could access online.

Here's an online archive of some texts from Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly, the newspaper Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, published:

http://www.victoria-woodhull.com/wcwarchive.htm

Here are some sites that present full texts of 19th century American writing online:

http://www.merrycoz.org/adults.htm
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/amlitage.htm
http://www.archive.org/details/lucyhowards00sigorich

If you can find a copy of The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells, I think that reading that would be very helpful.

Padma - Did you ever look at the thread in Experts and Research that was started from the post you put on the sticky. Your post was moved to its own thread. It's titled Ohioans 1920 (or something like that). I responded to your question and so did at least one other person. I think it's on the second page of that forum now. Puma