Women's Early American Historical Narratives edited by Sharon M. Harris

This fascinating collection presents a rare look at women writers' first-hand perspectives on early American history. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries many women authors began to write historical analysis, thereby taking on an essential role in defining the new American Republicanism. Like their male counterparts, these writers worried over the definition and practice of both public and private virtue, human equality, and the principles of rationalism. In contrast to male authors, however, female writers inevitably addressed the issue of inequality of the sexes. This collection includes writings that employ a wide range of approaches, from straightforward reportage to poetical historical narratives, from travel writing to historical drama, and even accounts in textbook format, designed to provide women with exercises in critical thinking—training they rarely received through their traditional education.

Included are works by Ann Eliza Bleecker, Margaretta V. Bleecker Faugeres, Judith Sargent Murray, Hannah Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Sarah Pogson, Sarah Pierce, Hannah Mather Crocker, Anne Newport Royall, and Emma Willard.

Soft Cover.

About the editor: Sharon M. Harris is the Lorraine Sherley Professor in Literature at Texas Christian University, co-editor of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, and president and founder of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers.  Her publications include American Women Writers to 1800: An Oxford Anthology; Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography; and Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray. She has contributed numerous articles to journals and books, among them Legacy, Early American Literature, and The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. Professor Harris previously taught at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and at Temple University.