Description: Do you sometimes feel that you would be able to grow in love for God and others ? if only your circumstances were different? Maybe you find that the sheer demands of everyday life squeeze out time for God? Perhaps a terrible tragedy has made you doubt the goodness of God? Read this true story to find out how one woman discovered that the most difficult circumstances are ?God's school? to teach us more about his grace; the very busy times are precisely those times when we need ? and can find ? God's strength; the worst of tragedies can draw us closer to God. Elizabeth Prentiss is best known as the author of the popular novel Stepping Heavenward (first published 1869) and the well-loved hymn, ?More Love to Thee.? The difficult things she experienced equipped her to minister to others through her letters, books, and poetry. To grow in love for God was the one great passion of her life: many have testified that her writings continue to inspire them with that same passion. I am grateful to Sharon James for sharing the story of this choice soul with us ? a gripping, marvelous, and moving biography. (Barbara Hughes)

"James shapes a new and original understanding of elegy. . . . The author's agenda of foregrounding the viewpoint of the "docta puella "should stimulate major changes in the way that these poems are studied."--Judith P. Hallett, University of Maryland, College Park

"James provides a highly original reading of the elegiac genre. Her use of the "docta puella "as the focalizing point of her reading provides new insight into its fundamental nature. . . . The book would serve as an excellent introduction to the genre for undergraduates."--Paul Allen Miller, author of "Latin Erotic Elegy: An Anthology and Reader

""Learned Girls and Male Persuasion should be required reading for anyone teaching or studying the elegists. . . . [Sharon James] views the genre in the light of social reality, showing us what is ubiquitous and obvious in the poems if we take off the rose-colored glasses of romantic idealism: the facts of violence, rape, and abortion, and, above all, the fundamental tension between the erotic demands of the lover and the economic needs of the puella. Elegy will never be the same again."--Julia Gaisser, author of "Catullus and his Renaissance Readers