Gossip Definitions and Discussions
This exhibit page collects examples of explicit, nineteenth-century mentions of gossip as a practice and source of knowledge. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Dinah Maria Mulock, for example, distinguish different forms of gossip: fruitful for sociality, harmful, idle, etc. Wm. Pitt Byrne ties gossip to gender norms but values gossip as an important source of knowledge: "History owes most of what little truth it contains, to the gossip of diarists and annotators as well as to the intimate confidences of friendly correspondence." Some of the articles gathered here that show 'gossip' in the title illustrate that gossip was largely used as a synonym for news at the middle of the nineteenth century, while others stress the (negative) gendered dimensions of gossip.

An 1841-article from the National Anti-Slavery Standard, which considers gossiping "[t]he most prevailing fault of conversation in our country"

A short entry about Grace Greenwood stating that celebrity opera singer Jenny Lind Goldschmidt is an abolitionist, which is presented as "interesting gossip" (1852)

This report from a Woman's Rights Convention published in The National Anti-Slavery Standard (Sep 16, 1852) demarks "gossip and scandal" as one of the valueless pastimes women are reduced to through the logic of separate spheres.

Short narrative on the dangers of gossiping about neighbours, offers distinction between gossip as "scandal-mongering" and "tattle" and "that natural interest with which we observe those who are to form our future associates" (1854)

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik comments on the relationship between truth and gossip, men and women, and gives contemporary examples of gossip and how to refrain from participating in gossipping activities (1858)

Behind-the-scenes gossip in Vandenhoff's Leaves from an Actor's Note-Book; With Reminiscences and Chit-Chat of the Green-Room and the Stage, in England and America (1860)

Poem about the spread of gossip, that is about things that aren't "anybody's business" – and yet are "made so" (from The Boston Adocate)

One of Anne Brewster's "Letter from Rome" (Boston Daily Advertiser) which mentions gossip repeatedly (1870)

Mary Agnes Tincker's By the Tiber (1881) describes one of the characters, who is based on Anne Brewster, as "one of the foreign centres of Roman gossip"