Presents the personal narratives of four women in the early days of American settlement. These are tales of exploration beyond conventional boundaries, women's voyages of self-discovery in a new world. The authors include Mary Rowlandson, Sarah Knight, Elizabeth Trist and Elizabeth Ashbridge.

An assessment of the major periods and varieties of American autobiography. Eleven original essays survey what has been done and point toward what can and should be done in future studies of a literary genre that is now receiving major scholarly attention.

This collection of essays focuses exclusively on the contribution of American woman to the writing of autiobiography. The authors trace editions of women's life-writing through three and a half centuries, from the narratives of Puritan woman to contemporary multicultural literature. Contributers to the volume include scholars such as: Sidonie Smith, Catharine Stimpson, Ann Gordon, Mary Mason, Nancy Walker, Katheleen Sands, Arlyn Diamond and others whose essays all appear here for the first time.

Documenting the connotations of James's phrase intensely family, this text examines the shame-based psychology bred by his parents and its impact on James's literary career. It draws on a collection of James's unpublished correspondence with his sister-in-law and nephew.

In this work Jewish-American scholars share their reflections on the interconnectedness of identities and ideas. They examine how their Jewishness has shaped and influenced their intellectual endeavours, and how their intellectual work has developed their sense of themselves as Jews.

This study of autobiographers from the 1960s demonstrates how they often claimed to speak on behalf of all members of their generation. It argues that the autobiographies are instead constructed with specific agendas in an effort to define the generation's and the writers' own identities.