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This volume illustrates the significance of epistolarity as a
literary phenomenon intricately interwoven with eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century cultural developments. Rejecting the common
categorization of letters as primarily private documents, this
collection of essays demonstrates the genre's persistent public
engagements with changing cultural dynamics of the revolutionary,
early republican, and antebellum eras. Sections of the collection
treat letters' implication in transatlanticism, authorship, and
reform movements as well as the politics and practices of editing
letters. The wide range of authors considered include Mercy Otis
Warren, Charles Brockden Brown, members of the Emerson and Peabody
families, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Stoddard, Catherine Brown,
John Brown, and Harriet Jacobs. The volume is particularly relevant
for researchers in U.S. literature and history, as well as women's
writing and periodical studies. This dynamic collection offers
scholars an exemplary template of new approaches for exploring an
understudied yet critically important literary genre.
2018 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Rebecca Harding Davis is
best known for her gritty short story ""Life in the Iron-Mills,""
set in her native Wheeling, West Virginia. Far less is known of her
later career among elite social circles in Philadelphia, New York,
and Europe, or her relationships with American presidents and
leading international figures in the worlds of literature and the
stage. In the first book-length biography of Davis, Sharon M.
Harris traces the extraordinary life of this pioneering realist and
recovers her status as one of America's notable women journalists.
Harris also examines Rebecca's role as the leading member of the
Davis family, a unique and nationally recognized family of writers
that shaped the changing culture of later nineteenth-century
literature and journalism. This accessible treatment of Davis's
life, based on deep research in archival sources, provides new
perspective on topics ranging from sectional tensions in the border
South to the gendered world of nineteenth-century publishing. It
promises to be the authoritative treatment of an important figure
in the literary history of West Virginia and the wider world.
From the late 1860s until her death in 1910, Rebecca Harding
Davis was one of the best-known writers in America. She broke into
print as a young woman in the 1860s with "Life in the Iron Mills,"
which established her as one of the pioneers of American realism.
She developed a literary theory of the "commonplace" nearly two
decades before William Dean Howels shaped his own version of the
concept. Yet, in spite of her importance to the literary and
popular culture of her time, she has been, for the most part,
ignored by scholars. "Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism"
will help to change that.
Nineteenth-century fiction writer and journalist Rebecca Harding
Davis (1831-1910) is best known for her novella Life in the Iron
Mills. Its publication in 1861 launched her stunning fifty-year
career that yielded a corpus of some 500 published works, including
short stories, novels, novellas, sketches, and social commentary.
Davis's unique mode of writing anticipated literary realism twenty
years before the time usually associated with its genesis. Today,
her life and work continue to figure prominently in the study of
American literature and culture. Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing
Cultural Autobiography is the annotated edition of her 1904
autobiography, Bits of Gossip, and a previously unpublished family
history written for her children. The memoirs are not traditional
autobiography; rather, they are Davis's perspective on the
extraordinary cultural changes that occurred during her lifetime
and of the remarkable - and sometimes scandalous - people who
shaped the events. She provides intimate portraits of the famous
people she knew, including Emerson, Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott,
Ann Stephens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Horace Greeley. Equally
important are Davis's commentaries on the political activists of
the Civil War era, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington,
from the ""daughters of the Southland"" to Lucretia Mott, from
Henry Ward Beecher to William Still. Whereas Bits of Gossip expands
our understanding of Davis as cultural critic and observer of life,
the family history offers new information on Davis's early life and
the influences that led her to become one of the nineteenth
century's pioneering Realists and cultural commentators. Together
they bring a human voice to the nineteenth-century American milieu.
This is the first anthology of Davis' civil war-era work. The ten
stories gathered here show Rebecca Harding Davis to be an acute
observer of the conflicts and ambiguities of a divided nation and
position her as a major transitional writer between romanticism and
realism. Capturing the fluctuating cultural environment of the
Civil War and Reconstruction eras, the stories explore such issues
as racial prejudice and slavery, the loneliness and powerlessness
of women, and the effects of postwar market capitalism on the
working classes. Davis' characters include soldiers and civilians,
men and women, young and old, black and white. Instead of focusing
(like many writers of the period) on major conflicts and leaders,
Davis takes readers into the intimate battles fought on family
farms and backwoods roads, delving into the minds of those who
experienced the destruction on both sides of the conflict. Davis
spent the war years in the Pennsylvania and Virginia borderlands, a
region she called a 'vast armed camp'. Here, divided families,
ravaged communities, and shifting loyalties were the norm. As the
editors say, 'Davis does not limit herself to writing about
slavery, abolition, or reconstruction. Instead, she shows us that
through the fighting, the rebuilding, and the politics, life goes
on. Even during a war, people must live: they work, eat, sleep, and
love'.
This is the first anthology of Davis' civil war-era work. The ten
stories gathered here show Rebecca Harding Davis to be an acute
observer of the conflicts and ambiguities of a divided nation and
position her as a major transitional writer between romanticism and
realism. Capturing the fluctuating cultural environment of the
Civil War and Reconstruction eras, the stories explore such issues
as racial prejudice and slavery, the loneliness and powerlessness
of women, and the effects of postwar market capitalism on the
working classes. Davis' characters include soldiers and civilians,
men and women, young and old, black and white. Instead of focusing
(like many writers of the period) on major conflicts and leaders,
Davis takes readers into the intimate battles fought on family
farms and backwoods roads, delving into the minds of those who
experienced the destruction on both sides of the conflict. Davis
spent the war years in the Pennsylvania and Virginia borderlands, a
region she called a 'vast armed camp'. Here, divided families,
ravaged communities, and shifting loyalties were the norm. As the
editors say, 'Davis does not limit herself to writing about
slavery, abolition, or reconstruction. Instead, she shows us that
through the fighting, the rebuilding, and the politics, life goes
on. Even during a war, people must live: they work, eat, sleep, and
love'.
This is the first major collection of letters by the
Revolutionary-era woman writer. This volume gathers more than one
hundred letters - most of them previously unpublished - written by
Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814). Warren, whose works include a
three-volume history of the American Revolution as well as plays
and poems, was a major literary figure of her era and one of the
most important American women writers of the eighteenth century.
Her correspondents included Martha and George Washington, Abigail
and John Adams, and Catharine Macaulay.Until now, Warren's letters
have been published sporadically, in small numbers, and mainly to
help complete the collected correspondence of some of the famous
men to whom she wrote. This volume addresses that imbalance by
focusing on Warren's letters to her family members and other women.
As they flesh out our view of Warren and correct some
misconceptions about her, the letters offer a wealth of insights
into eighteenth-century American culture, including social customs,
women's concerns, political and economic conditions, medical
issues, and attitudes on child rearing.This title features letters
that Warren sent to other women who had lost family members (Warren
herself lost three children) reveal her sympathies; and, letters to
a favorite son, Winslow, that show her sharing her ambitions with a
child who resisted her advice. What readers of other Warren letters
may have only sensed about her is now revealed more fully: she was
a woman of considerable intellect, religious faith, compassion,
literary intelligence, and acute sensitivity to the historical
moment of even everyday events in the new American republic.
This fascinating collection presents a rare look at women writers' first-hand perspectives on early American history. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries many women authors began to write historical analysis, thereby taking on an essential role in defining the new American Republicanism. Like their male counterparts, these writers worried over the definition and practice of both public and private virtue, human equality, and the principles of rationalism. In contrast to male authors, however, female writers inevitably addressed the issue of inequality of the sexes. This collection includes writings that employ a wide range of approaches, from straightforward reportage to poetical historical narratives, from travel writing to historical drama, and even accounts in textbook format, designed to provide women with exercises in critical thinking—training they rarely received through their traditional education.
Nineteenth-century fiction writer and journalist Rebecca Harding
Davis (1831-1910) is best known for her novella Life in the Iron
Mills. Its publication in 1861 launched her stunning fifty-year
career that yielded a corpus of some 500 published works, including
short stories, novels, novellas, sketches, and social commentary.
Davis's unique mode of writing anticipated literary realism twenty
years before the time usually associated with its genesis. Today,
her life and work continue to figure prominently in the study of
American literature and culture. Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing
Cultural Autobiography is the annotated edition of her 1904
autobiography, Bits of Gossip, and a previously unpublished family
history written for her children. The memoirs are not traditional
autobiography; rather, they are Davis's perspective on the
extraordinary cultural changes that occurred during her lifetime
and of the remarkable - and sometimes scandalous - people who
shaped the events. She provides intimate portraits of the famous
people she knew, including Emerson, Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott,
Ann Stephens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Horace Greeley. Equally
important are Davis's commentaries on the political activists of
the Civil War era, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington,
from the ""daughters of the Southland"" to Lucretia Mott, from
Henry Ward Beecher to William Still. Whereas Bits of Gossip expands
our understanding of Davis as cultural critic and observer of life,
the family history offers new information on Davis's early life and
the influences that led her to become one of the nineteenth
century's pioneering Realists and cultural commentators. Together
they bring a human voice to the nineteenth-century American milieu.
Rebecca Harding Davis is best known for her gritty short story
"Life in the Iron-Mills," set in her native Wheeling, West
Virginia. Far less is known of her later career among elite social
circles in Philadelphia, New York, and Europe, or her relationships
with American presidents and leading international figures in the
worlds of literature and the stage. In the first book-length
biography of Davis, Sharon M. Harris traces the extraordinary life
of this pioneering realist and recovers her status as one of
America's notable women journalists. Harris also examines Rebecca's
role as the leading member of the Davis family, a unique and
nationally recognized family of writers that shaped the changing
culture of later nineteenth-century literature and journalism. This
accessible treatment of Davis's life, based on deep research in
archival sources, provides new perspective on topics ranging from
sectional tensions in the border South to the gendered world of
nineteenth-century publishing. It promises to be the authoritative
treatment of an important figure in the literary history of West
Virginia and the wider world.
As a novelist, essayist, dramatist, and poet, Judith Sargent Murray
candidly and often humorously asserted her opinions about the
social and political conditions of women in late eighteenth-century
America. As a committed feminist, she urged American women to enter
a "new era in female history," yet published some of her own
writings under a man's name in hopes of more widely disseminating
her ideas. In addition to her literary endeavors Murray was a
prolific letter-writer, and revealed in her correspondence, as
elsewhere, her unwavering commitment to human rights. Also during
this period, Murray produced numerous sketches of celebrated female
contemporaries and her major work, The Gleaner.
With selections from The Gleaner and Murray's other publications,
this latest addition to the Women Writers in English series
unearths an important early feminist voice, one that should engage
the intellect and imagination of readers both inside and outside
the academy.
As a novelist, essayist, dramatist, and poet, Judith Sargent Murray candidly and often humorously asserted her opinions about the social and political conditions of women in late eighteenth-century America. As a committed feminist, she urged American women to enter a "new era in female history", yet published her own writings under a man's name in the hopes of more widely disseminating her ideas. This volume includes selections from The Gleaner, her major work, and other publications.
Similar to the "digital revolution" of the last century, the
colonial and early national periods were a time of improved print
technologies, exploding information, faster communications, and a
fundamental reinventing of publishing and media processes. Between
the early 1700s, when periodical publications struggled, and the
late 1790s, when print media surged ahead, print culture was
radically transformed by a liberal market economy, innovative
printing and papermaking techniques, improved distribution
processes, and higher literacy rates, meaning that information,
particularly in the form of newspapers and magazines, was available
more quickly and widely to people than ever before. These changes
generated new literary genres and new relationships between authors
and their audiences. The study of periodical literature and print
culture in the eighteenth century has provided a more intimate view
into the lives and tastes of early Americans, as well as enabled
researchers to further investigate a plethora of subjects and
discourses having to do with the Atlantic world and the formation
of an American republic. Periodical Literature in
Eighteenth-Century America is a collection of essays that delves
into many of these unique magazines and newspapers and their
intersections as print media, as well as into what these
publications reveal about the cultural, ideological, and literary
issues of the period; the resulting research is interdisciplinary,
combining the fields of history, literature, and cultural studies.
The essays explore many evolving issues in an emerging America:
scientific inquiry, race, ethnicity, gender, and religious belief
all found voice in various early periodicals. The differences
between the pre- and post-Revolutionary periodicals and
performativity are discussed, as are vital immigration, class, and
settlement issues. Political topics, such as the emergence of
democratic institutions and dissent, the formation of early
parties, and the development of regional, national, and
transnational cultural identities are also covered. Using digital
databases and recent poststructural and cultural theories, this
book returns us to the periodicals archive and regenerates the
ideological and discursive landscape of early American literature
in provocative ways; it will be of value to anyone interested in
the crosscurrents of early American history, book history, and
cultural studies. Mark L. Kamrath is associate professor of English
at the University of Central Florida. Sharon M. Harris is Lorraine
Sherley Professor of Literature at Texas Christian University.
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