At a time when sectional conflicts were dividing the nation, the five best-selling southern domestic novelists vigorously came to the defense of their native region. In response to northern criticism, Caroline Gilman, Caroline Hentz, Maria McIntosh, Mary Virginia Terhune, and Augusta Jane Evans presented through their fiction what they believed to be the ""true"" South. From the mid-1830s through 1866, these five novelists wrote about an ordered South governed by the aristocratic ethic of noblesse oblige, and argued that slavery was part of a larger system of reciprocal relationships that made southern society the moral superior of the individualistic North. Scholars have typically approached the domestic novel as a national rather than a regional phenomenon, assuming that because practically all domestic fiction was written by and for women, the elements of all domestic novels are essentially identical. Elizabeth Moss corrects that simplification, locating Gilman Hentz, McIntosh, Terhune, and Evans within the broader context of antebellum social and political culture and establishing their lives and works as important sources of information concerning the attitudes of southerners, particularly southern women, toward power and authority within their society. Moss's study of the novels of these women challenges the ""transhistorical view"" of women's history and integrates women into the larger context of antebellum southern history. Domestic Novelists in the Old South shows that whereas northern readers and writers of domestic fiction may have been interested in changing their society, their southern counterparts were concerned with strengthening and sustaining the South's existing social structure. But the southern domestic novelists did more than reiterate the ideology of the ruling class; they also developed a compelling defense of slavery in terms of southern culture that reflected their perceptions of southern society and women's place within it. Just how strong an impact these books had cannot be precisely determined, but Moss argues that at the height of their popularity, the five novelists were able to reach a broader audience than male apologists. In spite of their literary and historical significance, Caroline Gilman, Caroline Hentz, Maria McIntosh, Mary Virginia Tehune, and Augusta Jane Evans have received scant scholarly attention. Moss shows that the lives and works of these five women illuminate the important role domestic novelists played in the ideological warfare of the day. Writing in the language of domesticity, they appealed to the women of America, using the images of home and hearth to make a persuasive case for antebellum southern culture.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Handmaid's Tale written by Margaret Atwood, read by Elisabeth Moss, with Bradley Whitford, Amy Landecker and Ann Dowd.

READ BY ELISABETH MOSS, STAR OF THE HIT CHANNEL 4 TV SERIES

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.

Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception.

She is a fallen woman, an object of men's lust... Margerie Croft yielded up her virginity before her wedding, and then fled from her eager suitor - knowing that she could not marry a man she did not love. Now she is viewed as soiled goods, fit for only for the role of courtier's plaything. He sees something in her that others don't... Virgil Elton is King Henry VIII's physician, working on a tonic to restore his sovereign's flagging libido. But first it must be tested. Who better, then, than the wanton Margerie Croft? But as he gets to know her Virgil discovers someone as intelligent and passionate as she is beautiful - someone who has been gravely misunderstood. For her part, Margerie finds Virgil irresistible - with or without the help of his special medicine. But she knows she could never make Virgil a respectable wife. And yet, despite herself, Margerie can't help but wonder... Will they find the formula for a lasting love?