The essays in this volume examine the full breadth and complexity of the extensive oeuvre of American literary pioneer Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867).

One of the nation's first woman writers, literary pioneer Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867) is ranked with Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant as a founder of American literature. In a career that spanned four decades before the Civil War, Sedgwick published six novels, including Hope Leslie and A New-England Tale, and over one hundred short stories and sketches, as well as domestic novellas, travelogues, and books for children.

Now the full breadth and complexity of Sedgwick's extensive oeuvre is examined for the first time in this groundbreaking volume, which pairs nineteenth-century reviews of her writings with new critical essays on her works. The collection illuminates Sedgwick's skillful use of rhetoric, her feminism, her realism, her reform activities, as well as her central role in shaping the nation's literature.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lucinda Damon-Bach is Assistant Professor of English at Salem State College. Victoria Clements is Professor of English at the College of Southern Maryland.

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