Introduction; Kathleen Feeley and Jennifer Frost 1. ‘They make one very handsome Mirkin amongst them’: Gossip and Church Politics in Seventeenth-Century Virginia; Christine Eisel 2. ‘The Time When There Was So Much Talk of the Witchcraft in this Country’: Gossip and the Essex County Witchcraft Crisis of 1692; Mary Beth Norton 3. Governed Gossip: The Personal Letters and Public Purpose of Philip Ludwell in Early-Eighteenth-Century Virginia; Virginia Price 4. The Infamous Anne Royall: Jacksonian Gossip, Scribbler, and Scold; Nancy Isenberg 5. ‘Gadding, ‘ ‘Gainsaying, ‘ and Negotiating Gossip in the Antebellum Black Press; Erica L. Ball 6. Gossip Law: Popular Journalism and Transformations in Law and American Legal Culture; Samantha Barbas 7. Diplomacy and Gossip: Information-Gathering in the U.S. Foreign Service, 1900-1940; Molly M. Wood 8. ‘As Told By Helen Ferguson’: Hollywood Publicity, Gender, and the Public Sphere; Mary Desjardins 9. Gossip in the Women’s Pages: Legitimizing the Work of Women Journalists in the 1950s and 1960s; Kimberly Wilmot Voss 10. The Smearing of Joe Mc Carthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics; Andrea Friedman 11. Gossip Goes Mainstream: People Magazine, the National Enquirer, and the Rise of Personality Journalism; Anne Helen Petersen 12. Is Charles Trippy Famous?: Vlog Culture and Twenty-First-Century Celebrity Gossip on Internet Killed Television; Tim Seiber

Christine Eisel, Bowling Green State University, USA Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University; USA Virginia Price, Historic American Buildings Survey, National Park Service, USA Nancy Isenberg, Louisiana State University, USA Erica L. Ball, California State University, Fullerton, USA Samantha Barbas, University of Buffalo, USA Molly M. Wood, Wittenberg University, USA Mary Desjardins, Dartmouth College, USA Kimberly Wilmot Voss, University of Central Florida, USA Andrea Friedman, Washington University, St. Louis, USA Anne Helen Petersen, Whitman College, USA Tim Seiber, University of Redlands, USA