Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Secret Histories: A New Era in Constance Fenimore Woolson Scholarship

Secret Histories: A New Era in Constance Fenimore Woolson Scholarship

Gebhard, Caroline
Torsney, Cheryl
Diffley, Kathleen

Hardcover

Fiction AnthologiesCivil War Period (1850-1877)General World History

ISBN10: 0820369837
ISBN13: 9780820369839
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: Mar 15 2025
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.13
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

The eighteen essays in this volume explore Constance Fenimore Woolson's prodigious range in period and genre as well as place, from the Great Lakes to the defeated South and across storied Europe to the Mediterranean. The whole of her professional life comes alive in this enlightening collection's triptych.

The first section, A Writer's Experiments, reveals that Woolson's play with familiar genres and unfamiliar characters began during the 1870s and extended until she died in 1894. Consistently, she tested the limits of representing women's labor and their erotic desires.

The second section, Postbellum Souths, follows Woolson's travels through a land ravaged by war and injustice. Drawing on theories of travel, collective memory, the Lost Cause, religious controversy, and a race-bound region, these essays expose both the smugness of visitors and the agendas of residents that Woolson was among the first postwar writers to portray.

The third section, Through an International Lens, considers expatriate perceptions of European and Mediterranean cultures as well as misconceptions about the Gilded Age United States. Here and throughout this volume, responses to Woolson's travel sketches mingle with assessments of her fiction and poetry, while her encounters with the writing of other Americans demonstrate how regularly Woolson made her century's literary terrain more subtle and complex.

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Diffley, Kathleen

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Fiction Anthologies

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