Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women PDF
Preview Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women
WELL-READ LIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This page intentionally left blank WELL-READ LIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women Barbara Sicherman The University of North Carolina Press . Chapel Hill © 2010 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker and set in Minion by Graphic Composition, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Commit- tee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-P ublication Data Sicherman, Barbara. Well-read lives : how books inspired a generation of American women / Barbara Sicherman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8078-3308-7 (alk. paper) 1. Women — Books and reading — Social aspects — United States — History — 19th century. 2. Girls — Books and reading — Social aspects — United States — History — 19th century. 3. Women and literature — United States — History — 19th century. I. Title. z1039.w65s53 2010 028⬘ .9082 — dc22 2009039480 Earlier versions of chapter 1 appeared in “Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text,” in U.S. History as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays, ed. Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-H arris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); of chapter 4, in “Sense and Sensibility: A Case Study of Women’s Reading in Late-V ictorian America,” in Reading in America: Literature and Social History, ed. Cathy N. Davidson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); and of chapter 5, in “Reading and Ambition: M. Carey Thomas and Female Heroism,” American Quarterly 45 (March 1993): 73–103. Portions of chapter 2 appeared in “Reading and Middle-C lass Identity in Victorian America: Cultural Consumption, Conspicuous and Otherwise,” in Reading Acts: U.S. Readers’ Interactions with Literature, 1800– 1950, ed. Barbara Ryan and Amy M. Thomas (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), and in “Ideolo- gies and Practices of Reading,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 3, The Industrial Book, 1840–1880, ed. Scott E. Casper et al. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Portions of the epilogue appeared in “Connecting Lives: Women and Reading, Then and Now,” in Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 IN MEMORY OF Jeannette Bailey Cheek and Janet Wilson James This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction: Books and Lives . 1 Part I. Young Women’s Reading in the Gilded Age one. Reading Little Women . 13 two. Women and the New Cultural Landscape of the Gilded Age . 37 three. Young Women’s Ways of Reading . 57 Part II. Privileged Readers four. (Reading as) A Family Af air . 79 The Hamiltons of Fort Wayne five. Reading and Ambition . 109 M. Carey Thomas and Female Heroism six. Working Her Way through Culture . 135 Jane Addams and Literature’s Dual Legacy Part III. Reading without Privilege seven. Hull-H ouse as a Cultural Space . 165 eight. New Books, New Lives . 193 Jewish Immigrant Women, Reading, and Identity nine. With Pen and Voice . 221 Ida B. Wells, Race, Literature, and Politics Epilogue: From Then to Now . 251 Notes . 259 Selected Bibliography . 337 Acknowledgments . 357 Index . 361 Illustrations Frontispiece, Ednah Dow Cheney, Louisa May Alcott: The Children’s Friend (1888) . 15 Winslow Homer, The New Novel (1877) . 64 The Hamilton cousins of Fort Wayne . 82 “The three As”: Alice Hamilton, Allen Hamilton Williams, and Agnes Hamilton . 99 “The Friday Night,” Baltimore feminist literary circle . 122 Jane Addams, ca. 1880 . 145 Jane Addams, ca. 1888–92 . 168 Jane Addams with a young girl, ca. 1930 . 188 Portrait of Rose Cohen, ca. 1918–20 . 199 Portrait of Mary Antin, ca. 1915 . 209 Children at charge desk, Hamilton Fish Branch Library, New York City, ca. 1910 . 217 Ida B. Wells, ca. 1893–94 . 239
The list of books you might like
