Early-19th-Century Literature

In this year's scholarship commentators continue to devote their critical efforts to discussing cultural issues and individual authors. Social and political contexts serve as the basis of a number of significant contributions to the year's criticism. Several studies focus on literary women and their attempts to address gender and authorship issues, and one splendid book discusses the prominence of erotic publishing and its prosecution in New York City. Boys and masculinity serve as the subjects of an interesting examination of the portrayal of young men in the period's literature, and a fascinating study traces the influence of technology on the formation of a literary "free market" that helped writers depend less on literary patronage. As always, numerous works examine the contributions of African American writers. The importance of the period's travel literature informs a number of works appearing this year. Roman Catholicism in the 19th century once again attracts scholarly attention. Although the quantity of books written on Edgar Allan Poe has decreased in comparison to the amount of full-length studies on Poe appearing last year, a few important articles offer intriguing perspectives on Poe's literary canon. Washington Irving's influence on New York City's cultural heritage provides the foundation for a truly wonderful book, and Irving's fellow New Yorker James Fenimore Cooper serves as the subject of a surprisingly (and welcome) large number of important articles devoted to numerous aspects of Cooper's works. Scholars examine the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine M. Sedgwick, Fanny Fern, and other literary women of the period in some thought-provoking articles. An important study of William Gilmore Simms's role in establishing American romance as a prominent literary force during the period stands as one of the year's most significant scholarly offerings.

i. Period Studies

Anne E. Boyd's Wielding the Pen focuses on popular and relatively unknown women writers and their feelings about the 19th-century's print culture. Boyd's anthology ably demonstrates how these women were aware of the ways in which their works contributed to the period's discourses on gender, literature, democracy, and nationalism. Resisting the "slings and arrows of male criticism," the women featured in this important collection boldly advocated their right to authorship and unabashedly voiced their desire to participate in the nation's literary marketplace. Although Boyd notes that the included texts do not present readers with a "single composite portrait" of women's authorship, she feels that the works illustrate the period's multifaceted debate on the merits and pitfalls of female authorship. Could women become professional writers and still fulfill their roles as wives and mothers? Would American society suffer if women neglected their "domestic" endeavors to spend more time writing? Boyd capably uses essays, letters, fiction, poetry, and reviews of writers such as Lydia Maria Child, Lydia Sigourney, Frances Osgood, Margaret Fuller, and Fanny Fern (to name just a few) to demonstrate the various modes of the literary art employed by women to express their experiences as authors. Presenting the texts chronologically, Boyd provides superb introductory headnotes on each author, and the book's index arranges items by author, genre, theme, and region. Spanning the entire 19th century, Wielding the Pen illuminates the joys and frustrations women writers experienced as they strove to play prominent roles in building the nation's literature, and Boyd's anthology shows how women used the power of "self-representation and self-definition" to portray themselves as more than a mere "damned mob of scribbling women."

In Uncommon Women Laura Laffrado posits that women writing at the time had been trained to adhere to "conformist gendered models." Any number of female writers, however, while at times aligning themselves with the period's prevailing assumptions regarding traditional gender roles, violated "presumptive normativity" in their texts by challenging the manner in which women were represented. Focusing on autobiographical writings, Laffrado illustrates how any number of women writers, including Fanny Fern and Harriet Jacobs, were forced to struggle against race, class, and sexual obstacles that threatened to silence them. Attempting to narrate female selfhood, these women...