Margret Howth - Softcover

Davis, Rebecca Harding

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558610367 ISBN 13: 9781558610361

Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1993

Synopsis

"A rewarding, fascinatingly mature book of substance and power."--Tillie Olsen

About this title

About the Author:

American short-story writer, essayist and novelist. Davis is considered to be the pioneer of Realism in American literature. She is remembered for her criticism of industrial capitalism and revelation of its harsher side in her writings.

From Publishers Weekly:

This first novel by the 19th-century author of Life in the Iron Mills was serialized in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861-62; set in that period in an Indiana mill town, it shows the "life-long battle for bread and butter,"p. 20 the suffering that characterized the lives of the working poor in the era of industrialization. In her afterword, Yellin ( Women and Sisters: The Anti-Slavery Feminists in Nineteenth Century American Culture ) places this work of fiction in the context of Davis's dealings with her editor at the Atlantic Monthly, explaining that she rewrote the work to satisfy his call for a "sunnier literature." Without Yellin's background information, it would be hard to make sense of Davis's story and its incongruous ending wherein the title character sacrifices her chance for conventional love to help others, only to find ultimate fulfillment back in that same romantic relationship. As it stands, this novel has all the stock elements of a genre romance. An interesting case of the undue influence of an editor's views, important for feminist literary scholars and libraries, but not for the general reader.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1558610367
• ISBN 13: 9781558610361
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300