American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860Just as she helped launch the rediscovery of literary texts by American women writers, Nina Baym now uncovers the work of history performed by over 150 writers in over 350 texts. Here she explores a world of important writing unknown even to most specialists. The novels, poems, plays, textbooks, and travel narratives written by women between 1790 and the Civil War defy current theories of women's writing that stress a female domain of the private, homebound, and emotional. History is inarguably public in its nature and these women wrote it. In doing so, they challenged the imaginative and intellectual boundaries that divided domestic and public worlds. They claimed on behalf of all women the rights to know and to speak about the world outside the home, as well as to circulate their knowledge and opinions among the public. Their work helped shape the enormous public interest in history characteristic of the antebellum nation, and ultimately to forge our national identity in the history of the world. Nina Baym deftly outlines the master narrative of history implied in women's writings of this period, and discusses in a completely revisioned context the emergence of women's history in public discourse.
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From inside the book
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... Warren's biography of Fanny Fern calls attention to women's journalism . Louisa May Alcott's anonymous gothic thrillers have been located and re- printed ; Mercy Otis Warren's thousand - page history of the American Revo- lution has ...
... Mercy Otis Warren's 1790 Poems , Dramatic and Miscellaneous— probably the third book of poetry published by an American woman , pre- ceded by Anne Bradstreet's and Phillis Wheatley's books - is much more scripted to portray a ...
... Mercy Otis Warren justified her activities as historian by observing that men were too busy making history to keep ... Warren's elite connections , to notice and record the local and familial . They could claim to be doing this work on ...
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Maternal Historians Didactic Mothers | 29 |
History from the Divine Point of View | 46 |
Copyright | |
9 other sections not shown