Moral Economies of American Authorship organizes an impressive array of materials, moving between important claims and nuanced readings. Ryan's dis-cussions of women authors' reputations at the edge of propriety will be of inter-est to Legacy's readers.
Susan M. Ryan is Professor of English at the University of Louisville. She is the author of The Grammar of Good Intentions: Race and the Antebellum Culture of Benevolence.