The author recounts her voyage to Peru in 1833 to claim a family fortune, describes her adventures along the way, and argues for the legalization of divorce

"The Politics of the Essay is that rare scholarly work that provides both a history of this relatively new field and of its formal characteristics and inspires its readers to want to participate in the making of this history." -- Signs The first in-depth study of the relationship between women and essays. Employing gender, race, class, and national identity as axes of analysis, this volume introduces new perspectives into what has been a largely apolitical discussion of the essay. Includes an original essay by Susan Griffin.

A nineteenth-century social reform proposal, available again

Here for the first time is a book devoted exclusively to the topic of women’s autobiography in nineteenth-century France. Tracing the rise of autobiography in relation to women’s domestic confinement, Kathleen Hart demonstrates how Flora Tristan, George Sand, and Louise Michel transformed the genre. Inspired by Romantic socialism, each of these remarkable autobiographers links the story of her personal development to socio-historic change. In the wake of the 1830 Revolution, Tristan chronicles social unrest as she relates her progressive transformation into humanity’s “Woman Guide” in Peregrinations of a Pariah (1838). Writing in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution, Sand consolidates her role as a mediator between the rich and the poor in Story of My Life (1854). A legend of the 1871 Paris Commune, Michel establishes herself as the poet and prophet of a mythical Revolution yet to come in her Memoirs (1886). Exploring the dynamic interplay between revolution and feminist acts of self-affirmation, Revolution and Women’s Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century France will appeal to scholars of history, French culture, literature, and women’s studies.

This anthology aims to challenge stereotypes of women travellers. Rather than simply presenting writings by Victorian women who travelled bravely around the world disregarding social convention and danger, the editors present a range of writing and possible ways of being a woman traveller. As well as the 'eccentric' woman traveller, the editors have included writings by those who might be seen as failed travellers, cautious and conventional travellers and those who did not conform to the adventurous heroine stereotype. Because travelling as a woman and writing as a woman presents the author with a number of textual problems which must be negotiated, Foster and Mills have chosen to include writings which confronted these problems and which resolved them (or did not resolve them) in different ways.These textual problems include the depiction of other women, the representation of spatial relations, the negotiations undertaken in relation to the adventure heroine narrative and character and the position taken by the author in relation to the representation of knowledge. These issues are all crucial in relation to travel writing by women , and the women, whose writing has been collected together in this anthology have made bold decisions in relation to them.

A biography of the revolutionary, founding father, and second president of the United States explores his origins as a son of Massachusetts who crafted himself into an uncompromisingly ethical politician and social reformer.