Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, remain two of the best-known American women. But few people know how Sullivan came to her role as teacher of the deaf and blind Keller. Contrasting their lives with Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the era's prominent abolitionist, this book sheds light on the gender and disability expectations that affected the public perception of Sullivan and Keller. This book provides a fascinating insight into class, ethnicity, gender, and disability issues in the Gilded Age and Progressive-Era America.

The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism offers an ecclectic, comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to the immense cultural impact of the movement that encompassed literature, art, architecture, science, and politics.

A biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-64.

This is the second volume in the first full-scale scholarly edition of Thoreau’s correspondence in more than half a century. When completed, the edition’s three volumes will include every extant letter written or received by Thoreau—in all, almost 650 letters, roughly 150 more than in any previous edition, including dozens that have never before been published. Correspondence 2 contains 246 letters, 124 written by Thoreau and 122 written to him. Sixty-three are collected here for the first time; of these, forty-three have never before been published. During the period covered by this volume, Thoreau wrote the works that form the foundation of his modern reputation. A number of letters reveal the circumstances surrounding the publication of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in May 1849 and Walden in August 1854, as well as the essays “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849; now known as “Civil Disobedience”) and “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854), and two series, “An Excursion to Canada” (1853) and “Cape Cod” (1855). Writing and lecturing brought Thoreau a small group of devoted fans, most notably Daniel Ricketson, an independently wealthy Quaker and abolitionist who became a faithful correspondent. The most significant body of letters in the volume are those Thoreau wrote to Harrison Gray Otis Blake, a friend and disciple who elicited intense and complex discussions of the philosophical, ethical, and moral issues Thoreau explored throughout his life. Following every letter, annotations identify correspondents, individuals mentioned, and books quoted, and describe events to which the letters refer. A historical introduction characterizes the letters and connects them with the events of Thoreau’s life, a textual introduction lays out the editorial principles and procedures followed, and a general introduction discusses the history of the publication of Thoreau’s correspondence. Proper names, publications, events, and ideas found in both the letters and the annotations are included in the index, which provides full access to the contents of the volume.

The essential, “richly researched”* biography of Harriet Tubman, revealing a complex woman who “led a remarkable life, one that her race, her sex, and her origins make all the more extraordinary” (*The New York Times Book Review). Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history—a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. Now, in this magnificent biography, historian Kate Clifford Larson gives us a powerful, intimate, meticulously detailed portrait of Tubman and her times. Drawing from a trove of new documents and sources as well as extensive genealogical data, Larson presents Harriet Tubman as a complete human being—brilliant, shrewd, deeply religious, and passionate in her pursuit of freedom. A true American hero, Tubman was also a woman who loved, suffered, and sacrificed. Praise for Bound for the Promised Land “[Bound for the Promised Land] appropriately reads like fiction, for Tubman’s exploits required such intelligence, physical stamina and pure fearlessness that only a very few would have even contemplated the feats that she actually undertook. . . . Larson captures Tubman’s determination and seeming imperviousness to pain and suffering, coupled with an extraordinary selflessness and caring for others.”—The Seattle Times “Essential for those interested in Tubman and her causes . . . Larson does an especially thorough job of . . . uncovering relevant documents, some of them long hidden by history and neglect.”—The Plain Dealer “Larson has captured Harriet Tubman’s clandestine nature . . . reading Ms. Larson made me wonder if Tubman is not, in fact, the greatest spy this country has ever produced.”—The New York Sun