Sharon M. Harris - "A New Era in Female History": Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women Writers - American Literature 74:3 American Literature 74.3 (2002) 603-618 "A New Era in Female History": Ninteenth-Century U.S. Women Writers Sharon M. Harris The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature . By Marianne Noble. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press. 2000. 240 pp. Cloth, $57.50; paper, $19.95. Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature . By Lori Merish. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press. 1999. Cloth, $64.95; paper, $21.95. Sentimental Confessions: Spiritual Narratives of Nineteenth-Century African American Women . By Joycelyn Moody. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press. 2001. 216 pp. $40.00. Writing Out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture . By Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. 2002. 480 pp. $44.95. To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells . By Linda O. McMurry. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 1998. 416 pp. Paper, $18.95. Hungry Heart: The Literary Emergence of Julia Ward Howe . By Gary Williams. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press. 1999. 288 pp. $34.95. Challenging Boundaries: Gender and Periodization . Ed. Joyce W. Warren and Margaret Dickie. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press. 2000. 320 pp. Cloth, $50.00; paper, $25.00. Disarming the Nation: Women's Writing and the American Civil War . By Elizabeth Young. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.