Brief Mention

Editions

Between North and South: The Letters of Emily Wharton Sinkler, 1842–1865 . Ed. Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press. 2001. 237 pp. $29.95.

From the time of her departure from Philadelphia at the age of eighteen, as the bride of Charles Sinkler of Charleston in 1842, until the end of the Civil War, Emily Wharton Sinkler's letters provide a unique chronicle of her life and times. Not only transplanted from North to South, she and her family spent spring and summer with the Wharton family in Philadelphia, affording her an unusually bilateral perspective on the antebellum period.

From the Pen of a She-Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Emilie Riley McKinley . Ed. Gordon A. Cotton. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press. 2001. xv, 108 pp. $21.95.

A Pennsylvania-born, Southern-sympathizing teacher records her thoughts in a diary kept during the ten months following the capture and occupation of Vicksburg, Mississippi, by federal troops.

Romney and Other New Works about Philadelphia . By Owen Wister. Ed. James A. Butler. University Park: Penn. State Univ. Press. 2001. lvi, 259 pp. $29.95.

This volume offers the most complete fragment—at thirteen chapters and 48,000 words—of Wister's "Philadelphia novel," hitherto believed nonexistent but recently found by editor James A. Butler. The novel thematizes the tensions between old and new money in 1880s Philadelphia. Its portrait of Philadelphia society is augmented by comparison with Boston society.

"How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson" and Other Tales of Rebellious Girls and Daring Young Women . By Mark Twain. Ed. John Cooley. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press. 2001. xvi, 255 pp. Paper, $16.95.

Famous for his portrayals of rambunctious boys, Twain wrote a number of short stories featuring clever, active, independent girls. This edition brings together the best of those stories, supplying entertaining and valuable primary source material for a fuller understanding of Twain's attitudes toward gender roles.

Dearly Beloved Friends: Henry James's Letters to Younger Men . Ed. Susan E. Gunter and Steven H. Jobe. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. 2001. xxiii, 249 pp. $29.95.

Gunter and Jobe present 166 of 391 extant letters written by Henry James in the latter part of his life to Hendrik Anderson, Jocelyn Persse, Howard Sturgis, and Hugh Walpole. The editors' selection of letters ranging from "affectionate to the markedly intimate, physical, and even erotic," is designed to make available primary source material essential for "any serious consideration of Jamesian sexuality."

Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography . Ed. Janice Milner Lasseter and Sharon M. Harris. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt Univ. Press. 2001. xii, 217 pp. Cloth, $39.95; paper, $19.95.

This volume comprises Davis's 1904 "autobiography" Bits of Gossip, a previously unpublished family history intended for her children, and an introduction, chronology, and notes by the editors. More a story of her times than of Davis, Bits of Gossip covers broad geographical and chronological terrain, including life North and South, westward expansion, the rise of capitalism, and the Civil War. Her encounters with famous people, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott, also form an important part of the narrative.

The Southern Agrarians and the New Deal: Essays after "I'll Take My Stand." Ed. Emily S. Bingham and Thomas A. Underwood. Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia. 2001. xi, 310 pp. $45.00.

Bingham and Underwood contend that critics, encouraged by some Agrarians who outlived their movement, often neglect the more overtly political writings that came after the famous collection I'll Take My Stand. This volume presents the essays of six Agrarians, including John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, that will contribute to an understanding of the different emphases within the Agrarian movement and also provide a basis for further critical discussion on the merits of the Agrarian cultural critique compared with concerns about their "undemocratic social views."

The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 7: The Early Simple Stories . Ed. Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper. Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press. 2002. xvi, 381 pp. $34.95.

This volume comprises the...