Wide-ranging, admirably researched, and accessible, this volume of essays locates women writers firmly in the center of the hurly-burly of literary and economic developments that made up the literary marketplace in nineteenth-century America. â "Dr. Joanne Dobson, independent scholar and novelist. This remarkable collection by editors Earl Yarington and Mary De Jong contributes richly to the ongoing recovery of the works and methods of highly popular American women writers of the nineteenth century. Augmenting the body of scholarship on professional women writers, these essays showcase the ways in which best-selling female authors met the demands of a burgeoning literary marketplace. This collection provides striking insights into an industry that was anything but sedate or genteel. Sensitive to hair-trigger shifts in the marketplace, nineteenth-century women writers refined their strategies for meeting consumer desires. Professional writers like Stowe, Hale, Warner, Holmes and Southworth are recognized here for their attunement to audience trends, tastes and temperament. They responded with a prodigious output of novels, short fiction, non-fiction and serialized features that bolstered the American publishing industry. The contributors to this much-needed volume have succeeded in re-acquainting later generations with the extensive output and skilled professionalism of writers whose works once covered parlor library tables. This is an important scholarly achievement. â "Susan I. Gatti, Indiana University of PA Includes essays on Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Grace Greenwood, Anna Warner, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Alcott, Grace King, Frances Harper, Chopin, Winnifred Eaton, and other successful authors.

Coultrap-McQuin investigates the reasons for women's unprecedented literary professionalism in the nineteenth century, highlighting the experiences of E.D.E.N. Southworth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gail Hamilton, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward. She examines the cultural milieu of women writers, the ideals and practices of the literary marketplace, and the characteristics of women's literary activities that brought them success. Originally published in 1990. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

In the decades spanning the nineteenth century, thousands of women entered the literary marketplace. Twelve of the century's most successful women writers provide the focus for Mary Kelley's landmark study: Maria Cummins, Caroline Howard Gilman, Caroline Lee Hentz, Mary Jane Holmes, Maria McIntosh, Sara Parton, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, E.D.E.N. Southworth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Virginia Terhune, Susan Warner, and Augusta Evans Wilson. These women shared more than commercial success. Collectively they created fictions that Kelley terms "literary domesticity," books that both embraced and called into question the complicated expectations shaping the lives of so many nineteenth-century women. Matured in a culture of domesticity and dismissed by a male writing establishment, they struggled to reconcile public recognition with the traditional roles of wife and mother. Drawing on the 200 volumes of published prose and on the letters, diaries, and journals of these writers, Kelley explores the tensions that accompanied their unprecedented literary success. In a new preface, she discusses the explosion in the scholarship on writing women since the original 1984 publication of Private Woman, Public Stage and reflects on the book's ongoing relevance.

Looks at the careers of twelve bestselling women novelists and discusses how they resolved the conflict between their fame and the socially acceptable feminine roles of the time