A compelling analysis of how "middling" Americans entertained themselves and how these entertainments changed over time."The purposes ofLaboring to Playare several: to give new and sustained attention to the parlor as an important site of social and cultural formation; to consider the ways in which home entertainment texts and practices helped shape an emerging middle-class identity in the United States; to chart the evolution of such texts and practices and thus also their changing effects on class formation; to extend existing scholarship on the middle class; to reexamine the inter-relationship of work and play in American culture; and to explore the roles of pleasure and game-playing in American identity. Highly effective are the detailed readings of the "entertainment chronotope" in a number of important American literary texts, including Alcott"sLittle Women,Wharton"sThe House of Mirth,Lewis"sMain Street,Gilman"sHerland,and Cather"sMy Ántonia."--William Gleason, author ofThe Leisure Ethic: Work and Play in American Literature, 1840-1940."A learned and engaging analysis based on an impressive body of research. . . . Dawson"s focus on entertainment in the home has the benefit of providing us with a close and careful look at the intersections between ideologies of domesticity, class, and leisure."--Cynthia J. Davis, author ofBodily and Narrative Forms: The Influence of Medicine in American Literature, 1845-1915