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The Only True Folksongs in English: American Ballad Scholarship, 1855-1915 uncovers how nineteenth-century American scholars including the children of farmers, sail makers, and ministers set out to prove that a young republic could, in fact, have its own folk tradition.

According to nationalist thought of the time, a true nation required a "folk"-an ancient, undivided people with a distinct spirit expressed in timeless ballads. The United States, as the first modern state, lacked this past and therefore, supposedly, lacked any authentic folk culture. Yet between 1855 and 1915, a group of scholars-James Russell Lowell, Francis James Child, William Wells Newell, Francis Barton Gummere, George Lyman Kittredge, and John Avery Lomax-along with poet Katharine Lee Bates, rose to the challenge.

Through their writings, these intellectuals defined what counted as "traditional popular poetry," discovered home-grown American ballads, and established ballad study as central to emerging disciplines like literary studies, anthropology, and folklore. Their work paved the way for the collection of hundreds of American-made folksongs and helped forge a national identity rooted not in race or ancestry but in the songs of ordinary people.