This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.

Disciples of Light contains almost two hundred of the earliest known English and Scottish photographs, most of which have never been published. The volume includes all the significant photographs in the album, compiled by Sir David Brewster, an important early patron of photography. Photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of negative-positive paper photography, are included, as well as works by other photographers who improved upon Talbot's invention. The text discusses the context in which the album was compiled, the personalities of the photographers, and the groups of specific images that it contains. Numerous comparative illustrations are included, as well as a checklist of all photographic images, a bibliography, and an index of all proper names and place names.

This study reinterprets a crucial period (1870s-1920s) in the history of women's rights, focusing attention on a core contradiction at the heart of early feminist theory. At a time when white elites were concerned with imperialist projects and civilizing missions, progressive white women developed an explicit racial ideology to promote their cause, defending patriarchy for "primitives" while calling for its elimination among the "civilized." By exploring how progressive white women at the turn of the century laid the intellectual groundwork for the feminist social movements that followed, Louise Michele Newman speaks directly to contemporary debates about the effect of race on current feminist scholarship. "White Women's Rights is an important book. It is a fascinating and informative account of the numerous and complex ties which bound feminist thought to the practices and ideas which shaped and gave meaning to America as a racialized society. A compelling read, it moves very gracefully between the general history of the feminist movement and the particular histories of individual women."--Hazel Carby, Yale University