ABSTRACT
Rich sources of northeastern humor remain largely untapped in newspapers, periodicals, jokebooks, hardcover reprints of the more transient popular pamphlets, and even such sources as elocution an thologies. The arbitrary division of American humor into Yankee, Knickerbocker, southwestern, and western schools obscures the re sponsiveness of northeastern humorists to their changing milieu. For example, the active group of Philadelphia writers, including Nicholas Biddle,'Joseph C. Neal, Charles and Henry Leland, and lesser writers, attracted to Neal's Saturday Gazette, Godey's, and Graham's falls out side any of these previous categories. Even a comprehensive listing of the writers of the northern cities through the nineteenth century has yet to be done. However, many of the sources used to derive the selections for this anthology lead to still other writers.
