As the American literary canon has undergone revision and expansion in recent years, the influence of women writers of the nineteenth century has been reevaluated. The first book of its kind, this reference provides alphabetically arranged entries for more than 70 nineteenth-century American women writers, such as Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Emma Lazarus, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of the author's major works and themes, an overview of the critical studies examining the writer's works, and a...

The American literary canon has undergone revision and expansion in recent years, and our notions of the 19th-century renaissance have been reevaluated. Mainstream anthologies have been revised to reflect the expanding literary canon, yet resources for readers have remained widely scattered. This book expands earlier definitions of the 19th-century American Renaissance as represented by canonical writers such as Emerson and Poe, covering writers who published popular fiction and dominated the literary marketplace of the day. Included is generous coverage of women writers and writers of...

One of the leading intellectuals of first-wave feminism, Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935] was a prolific socialist writer and lecturer. Nearly forgotten in the years following her death, she has been the subject of renewed interest and appreciation in recent decades. Drawing from her previous two-volume edition of The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, editor Denise D. Knight here makes available a streamlined version of Gilman's extensive personal diaries and journals, with representative selections from various periods of her life.

Included in this single volume are entries...