American writer and world traveler Constance Fenimore Woolson
(1840-1894) was author of more than fifty short stories, four
novels, a novella, and numerous poems and travel essays. During her
lifetime, she achieved both popular and critical success, but much
of her work is no longer available. This volume, as the first
anthology to collect representative samples of her stories, travel
sketches, poems, and correspondence, represents a major advance
toward re-establishing her place in nineteenth-century literature
and letters. As these pieces demonstrate, Woolson offered keen
observations on the issues she cared most deeply about, namely the
cultural and political transformation of the United States in the
wake of the Civil War, the status of women writers and artists in
the nineteenth century, and the growing implications of nationalism
and imperialism. Woolson grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and began her
career writing regional travel stories about the closing of the
American frontier in the old Northwest Territories (now known as
the Great Lakes region). During the Civil War, she worked for a
variety of Union causes and in 1873 moved to St. Augustine,
Florida. Traveling throughout the South, she wrote stories and
travel narratives that highlighted the wholesale changes facing
Americans after the Civil War. In 1879, Woolson left the United
States for Europe. There, she engaged her passion for nature and
exercised her gift for social satire. In her European writings, she
deplored the Americans' slavish devotion to the ubiquitous
guidebooks of the nineteenth century, and she chose instead to
spend long periods of time in one place in order to better learn
about it. Throughout her time in Europe (including visits to North
Africa), Woolson often commented that she could not describe
landscapes, only experience them. By the time of her death in
Venice at age fifty-three, she had become convinced that the
colonial agendas of the United States and Europe would transform
landscapes and peoples in far-reaching and ultimately dangerous
ways. This collection features selections from each of the three
distinct periods of Woolson's career and includes a chronology of
her life and travels. Focusing primarily on Woolson's short
stories, editors Victoria Brehm and Sharon L. Dean also include a
representative letter, poem, and travel sketch for each section.
Victoria Brehm is associate professor of English at Grand Valley
State University. She is editor of three anthologies, including "A
Fully Accredited Ocean": Essays on the Great Lakes and Sweetwater,
Storms, and Spirits: Stories of the Great Lakes. Sharon L. Dean is
professor of English at Rivier College and is author of Constance
Fenimore Woolson: Homeward Bound and Constance Fenimore Woolson and
Edith Wharton: Perspectives on Landscape and Art.
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