Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South (Cambridge Studies on the American South) - Softcover

Wells, Jonathan Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 110764979X ISBN 13: 9781107649798

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Synopsis

The first study to focus on white and black women journalists and writers both before and after the Civil War, this book offers fresh insight into southern intellectual life, the fight for women's rights, and gender ideology. Based on fresh research into southern magazines and newspapers, this book seeks to shift scholarly attention away from novelists and toward the rich and diverse periodical culture of the South between 1820 and 1900. Magazines were of central importance to the literary culture of the South because the region lacked the publishing centers that could produce large numbers of books. Easily portable, newspapers and magazines could be sent through the increasingly sophisticated postal system for relatively low subscription rates. The mix of content, from poetry to short fiction and literary reviews to practical advice and political news, meant that periodicals held broad appeal. As editors, contributors, correspondents, and reporters in the nineteenth century, southern women entered traditionally male bastions when they embarked on careers in journalism. In so doing, they opened the door to calls for greater political and social equality at the turn of the twentieth century.

About this title

Book Description:

As the first book to examine black and white women editing and writing for magazines and newspapers in the nineteenth-century South, this study offers new insight into women and gender roles. While popular myths depict the region as the land of the shy and quiet southern belle, this book demonstrates that southern women were often politically active and outspoken. This book calls into question widespread assumptions about the nineteenth-century South, its intellectual and literary life, and the role of women in society.

About the Author:

Jonathan Daniel Wells is Associate Professor of History at Temple University. He is the author or editor of six books, including The Origins of the Southern Middle Class: 1820-1861 and Entering the Fray: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the New South. He is a co-editor of a forthcoming collection of essays, The Southern Middle Class in the Nineteenth Century. He has published several reviews and articles on nineteenth-century America, the Civil War, slavery, gender, politics, class and intellectual life, in journals such as The Journal of Southern History, American Nineteenth-Century History and the Maryland Historical Magazine.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 110764979X
• ISBN 13: 9781107649798
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 258