Research Catalog

Title

Domestic abolitionism and juvenile literature, 1830-1865 / Deborah C. De Rosa

Author

De Rosa, Deborah C.

Publication

Albany : State University of New York Press, c2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 200 p. : ill.; 23 cm.

Summary

"Deborah C. De Rosa examines the multifaceted nature of domestic abolitionism, a discourse that nineteenth-century women created to voice their political sentiments when cultural imperatives demanded their silence. For nineteenth-century women struggling to find an abolitionist voice while maintaining the codes of gender and respectability, writing children's literature was an acceptable strategy to counteract the opposition. By seizing the opportunity to write abolitionist juvenile literature, De Rosa argues, domestic abolitionists were able to enter the public arena while simultaneously maintaining their identities as exemplary mother-educators and preserving their claims to "femininity." Using close textual analyses of archival materials, De Rosa examines the convergence of discourses about slavery, gender, and children in juvenile literature from 1830 to 1865, filling an important gap in our understanding of women's literary productions about race and gender, as well as our understanding of nineteenth-century American literature more generally."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Slavery in literature
• American literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• Antislavery movements in literature
• Children's literature, American > History and criticism
• Children > Books and reading > United States > History > 19th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-187) and index.

Contents

1. "Some twelve or fifteen others...the committee would recommend for publication": Domestic Abolitionists and Their Publishers -- 2. "Now, Caesar, say no more today; Your story makes me cry": Sentimentalized Victims and Abolitionist Tears -- 3. Seditious Histories: The Abolitionist Mother-Historian -- 4. "We boys [and girls] had better see what we can do, for it is too wicked": The Juvenile Abolitionists.

ISBN

• 0791458253 (acid-free paper)
• 0791458261 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

LCCN

2002042644

OCLC

• ocm51059099
• SCSB-4833555

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries