"Temperance tales". Antiliquor fiction and American attitudes toward alcoholics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Much of the American temperance fiction and graphics (the "Temperance Tales") of the mid-1800s to the early 1900s demonstrated a relatively sophisticated understanding of the progressive nature of alcoholism. In explaining the alcoholic process to the public, this fiction contributed to the general belief that the typical alcoholic was a Skid Row-like derelict.