04382nam 2200709Ia 450 991081719590332120240418031327.00-8122-0389-510.9783/9780812203899(CKB)2670000000418292(OCoLC)859161057(CaPaEBR)ebrary10748598(SSID)ssj0000981312(PQKBManifestationID)11632753(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000981312(PQKBWorkID)10971555(PQKB)10697319(MdBmJHUP)muse29226(DE-B1597)449736(OCoLC)1013957181(OCoLC)979753838(DE-B1597)9780812203899(Au-PeEL)EBL3442172(CaPaEBR)ebr10748598(CaONFJC)MIL682560(MiAaPQ)EBC3442172(EXLCZ)99267000000041829220051219d2006 uy 0engurcn|||||||||txtccrReclaiming authorship literary women in America, 1850-1900 /Susan S. Williams1st ed.Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Pressc20061 online resource (264 p.)Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph1-322-51278-7 0-8122-3942-3 Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-243) and index.Front matter --Contents --Preface --1. Defining Female Authorship --2. Writing in and out of the Home: Parlor Culture and Authorship --3. Authorizing Reception: Maria Cummins and The Lamplighter --4. Revising Romance: Louisa May Alcott, Hawthorne, and the Civil War --5. Contractual Authorship: Elizabeth Keckley and Mary Abigail Dodge --6. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's Ethical Authorship --7. Epilogue: Amateurs and Professionals in Woolson and James --Notes --Bibliography --Index --AcknowledgmentsThere was, in the nineteenth century, a distinction made between "writers" and "authors," Susan S. Williams notes, the former defined as those who composed primarily from mere experience or observation rather than from the unique genius or imagination of the latter. If women were more often cast as writers than authors by the literary establishment, there also emerged in magazines, advice books, fictional accounts, and letters a specific model of female authorship, one that valorized "natural" feminine traits such as observation and emphasis on detail, while also representing the distance between amateur writing and professional authorship. Attending to biographical and cultural contexts and offering fresh readings of literary works, Reclaiming Authorship focuses on the complex ways writers such as Maria S. Cummins, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Abigail Dodge, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Constance Fenimore Woolson put this model of female authorship into practice. Williams shows how it sometimes intersected with prevailing notions of male authorship and sometimes diverged from them, and how it is often precisely those moments of divergence when authorship was reclaimed by women. The current trend to examine "women writers" rather than "authors" marks a full rotation of the circle, and "writers" can indeed be the more capacious term, embracing producers of everything from letters and diaries to published books. Yet certain nineteenth-century women made particular efforts to claim the title "author," Williams demonstrates, and we miss something of significance by ignoring their efforts.American literatureWomen authorsHistory and criticismAmerican literature19th centuryHistory and criticismWomen and literatureUnited StatesHistory19th centuryAuthorshipCultural Studies.Literature.American literatureWomen authorsHistory and criticism.American literatureHistory and criticism.Women and literatureHistoryAuthorship.810.9/928709034Williams Susan S309175MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910817195903321Reclaiming authorship3970086UNINA