American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860

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Rutgers University Press, 1995 - American fiction - 307 pages
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Just 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.

From inside the book

 

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Page 15
... a vivid imagination be of service and how far the light which it throws over the
darkness and roughness of the path of life should be followed without hesitation .
Imagination is a dangerous faculty where no control exists over its exercise and ...
Page 16
But imagination when controlled gives a gift to every situation in life and throws a
moonlight radiance over every feeling . To direct this faculty in its proper course
we have put Universal History into your hands . In addition to the effect which this
 ...
Page 140
from the great past , which fired the imagination while they thrilled the soul . The
dream of my youth was now a reality . I was looking upon that noble city ” ( Le
Vert , 2 : 170 ) . “ In imagination , I peopled those seats ( of the Coliseum ) with
one ...

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AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS AND THE WORK OF HISTORY, 1790-1860

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By revealing women's use of history in the making of it, Baym rebuts conventional wisdom about women's absence from national life in antebellum America. Baym (English/Univ. of Illinois, Champaign ... Read full review

Contents

Introduction
1
Women as Students of History II
11
Maternal Historians Didactic Mothers
29
Copyright

12 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860
Nina Baym,Professor of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences Nina Baym
Snippet view - 1995
American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860
Nina Baym,Professor of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences Nina Baym
Snippet view - 1995

Common terms and phrases

American antebellum appeared beautiful become biographical Born Boston buried called cause character Child Christian Civil course culture daughter developed died domestic early Eliza Elizabeth England Europe example fact father feel female fiction France give Hannah heart Hope human imagination important Indian insists interest Italy John kind Lady land Letters literary lives Margaret Maria married Mary Mass means memory mind moral mother narrative Native nature never novels Occupations past patriotism Philadelphia play poem political present produced progress Protestant published Puritan readers record religion religious republic republican Roman Rome Sarah says scenes seems social society Sources story teacher thought tion true United University University Press virtue Washington woman women writing written wrote York young

References to this book

About the author (1995)

Nina Baym taught at the University of Illinois, where she specialized in American Literature. She is General Editor of the Norton Anthology of American Literature, the most widely used textbook in the field. She has won Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Mellon Foundation fellowships. In 2000 she won the Jay Hubbell Award from the Modern Language Association, awarded for lifetime contributions to the study of American literature. Her first book was about Nathaniel Hawthorne, and she has published a Twayne study of The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne's complaint in a private letter about the "damn'd mob of scribbling women," whose works were popular while his were not inspired her to find out who these forgotten women were and what they wrote. The first of her books on this topic was Woman's Fiction (1978); then came American Women Writers and the Work of History; next American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-Century Sciences. Some of her essays were brought together in Feminism and American Literary History. Her newest foray is Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927, which describes the western books of over 340 American women including Native American women and African Americans, and covers the transMississippi West from Texas to Oregon.

Bibliographic information

QR code for American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860
TitleAmerican Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860
AuthorsNina Baym, Professor of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences Nina Baym
ContributorCairns Collection of American Women Writers
PublisherRutgers University Press, 1995
Original fromthe University of Michigan
Digitized27 Feb 2008
ISBN0813521424, 9780813521428
Length307 pages
  
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