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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... letters . Published tourist accounts by women almost always take the shape of revised journals or familiar letters . These modes , how- ever , are not to be equated with the private or confidential . Notwithstand- ing another current ...
... letters from her father and set to work revising them for publi- cation . When she died before completing the task , her husband brought her book out as a memorial to her desire . Professional women of letters who went overseas on ...
... Letters from the Old World ( Sarah Haight ) , 133 , 137 , 138 , 140-141 Letters of Life ( Lydia Sigourney ) , 33 , 84- 85 Letters on Free Masonry ( Hannah Mather Crocker ) , 16-17 Letters on the Equality of the Sexes ( Sarah Grimké ) , 224 ...
Contents
Women as Students of History II | 11 |
Maternal Historians Didactic Mothers | 29 |
History from the Divine Point of View | 46 |
Copyright | |
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