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Reviewed by:
  • E.D.E.N. Southworth: Recovering a Nineteenth-Century Popular Novelist ed. by Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington
  • Autumn Lauzon
Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington, eds. E.D.E.N. Southworth: Recovering a Nineteenth-Century Popular Novelist. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2012. 317p.

Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington’s collection of essays on E.D.E.N. Southworth is an important addition to the study of nineteenth-century women writers, particularly when looking at women writers who used their texts as voices for social reform. Homestead and Washington in their captivating introduction provide an enlightening and informative overview of Southworth scholarship, mentioning numerous studies from the past thirty years, while also pointing out the major problems that currently exist; the major problem, according to Homestead and Washington, is that scholarship “has narrowed and calcified rather than broadened and deepened” (xviii). The editors make note that research and interest on Southworth have been solely focused on her popular The Hidden Hand; or Capitola the Madcap, while other Southworth texts have been neglected. Intimate familiarity with Southworth is not a necessity for enjoying, and benefitting, from this collection; however, Southworth scholarship may very well increase due to the remarkable bibliographical introduction that explains Southworth’s historical importance and her complexity as a writer.

The collection is divided into four sections, each containing three essays, which provide just a taste of Southworth’s diversity as a writer and an activist. The first section, “Serial Southworth,” looks at Southworth as a serial author with essays that discuss her publications in such periodicals as the National Era, the New York Ledger, Saturday Evening Post, and Publishers’ Weekly, to mention only a few. Focus on her serialization then segues into the second group of essays that look at Southworth’s many genres of writing, which, in Southworth’s case, are not limited to the two “female” genres of domestic and sentimental fiction; rather, these essays show Southworth’s vast repertoire, including Gothicism, transvestite characters, and the ways in which she “experiment[s] with hybridity” (78). The [End Page 90] third section, “Intertextual Southworth,” offers further evidence of this author’s complexity, highlighting her conversation with a vast range of texts and authors such as The Faerie Queene, tragic plays, George Sand, and Harriet Beecher Stowe within her own works. The final section includes essays that analyze the ways in which Southworth wrote about the connections between marriage, law, and the rights and status of women in the nineteenth century, particularly the problems that arise from marriage. The collection concludes with an extensively detailed bibliography of Southworth’s works from 1857 to 1905.

Throughout the book are illustrations that accompanied Southworth’s periodical writings, which add an interesting visual aspect to the collection. Kathryne Conner Bennett, in “Illustrating Southworth: Genre Conventionality, and The Island Princess,” analyzes these illustrations to explain how Southworth took advantage of the amalgamation of text and visual. In terms of organization and structure, although it is divided into thematic sections, the essays fit together perfectly and intertwine many of Southworth’s interests. For example, Ellen Weinauer’s essay titled “Poe, Southworth, and the Antebellum Wife” discusses intertextuality (through Poe’s writings) while also looking at Southworth’s Gothic perspective on marriage. Elizabeth Stockton’s essay, “E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Reimagining of the Married Women’s Property Reforms,” provides a thoughtprovoking look at Southworth’s immense knowledge of legal institutions within her novels as well as personal letters. Vicki L. Martin, Beth L. Lueck, and Karen Tracey offer captivating critiques of Southworth’s opinions and publications on slavery and race, particularly her explorations of “the psychology of racial stereotyping, fears of miscegenation” and the troubling relationships between master/mistress and slave (105). Though each author in the collection takes a different stance on Southworth, one major trend throughout the collection is her “radical thinking about law, progress, and reform” (184), which is what makes reading each essay so engaging, entertaining, and informative.

Though the essays include a diverse range of Southworth’s texts, this collection is only a sampling of what Southworth has to offer. Indeed, Homestead and Washington even note that there...

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