CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK: FURTHER READING

Biographies

Foster, Edward Halsey. Catherine Maria Sedgwick. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1974, 171 p.

Offers a full-length biography of Sedgwick.

Kelley, Mary. "Catherine Maria Sedgwick, 1789-1867." Legacy 6, no. 2 (fall 1989): 43-50.

Provides a biographical and critical overview.

——. "A Woman Alone: Catherine Maria Sedgwick's Spinsterhood in Nineteenth-Century America." New England Quarterly 51, no. 2 (June 1978): 209-25.

Compares the feminine ideal that Sedgwick professed in her fiction with the realities of her personal life.

Saulsbury, Rebecca R. "Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867)." In Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, edited by Denise D. Knight, pp. 351-60. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Offers an overview of Sedgwick's life, her major works and themes, and the critical reception of her writing.

Criticism

Bauermeister, Erica R. "The Lamplighter, The Wide, Wide, World and Hope Leslie: Reconsidering Recipes for Nineteenth-Century American Women's Novels." Legacy 8, no. 1 (spring 1991): 17-28.

Provides a comparative study of three novels written by prominent nineteenth-century women writers, commenting on the novels standing as autonomous works of literature.

Fetterley, Judith. "'My Sister! My Sister!': The Rhetoric of Catherine Sedgwick's Hope Leslie." American Literature 70, no. 3 (September 1998): 491-516.

Contends that Hope Leslie is a novel that examines and reflects the political and ideological contradictions of its times.

Ford, Douglas. "Inscribing the 'Impartial Observer' in Sedgwick's Hope Leslie." Legacy 14, no. 2 (1997): 81-92.

Discusses the manner in which Hope Leslie addresses the repressive treatment of women and Native Americans.

Garvey, T. Gregory. "Risking Reprisal: Catharine Sedgwick's Hope Leslie and the Legitimation of Public Action by Women." American Transcendental Quarterly 10, no. 1 (March 1996): 41-58.

Asserts that Hope Leslie dramatizes the challenge of female authorship in nineteenth-century America while also displaying the advantages of expanding women's responsibility for moral values of the public arena.

Gossett, Suzanne and Barbara Ann Bardes. "Women and Political Power in the Republic: Two Early American Novels." Legacy 2, no. 2 (fall 1985): 13-30.

Analysis and comparison of Hope Leslie and Sarah Josepha Hale's Northwood as fictive expressions of the contemporary political culture.

Gould, Philip. "Catherine Sedgwick's 'Recital' of the Pequot War." American Literature 66, no. 4 (December 1994): 641-62.

Examines Sedgwick's revisionary history of the Pequot War in Hope Leslie and discusses the significance of its anti-patriarchalism.

Higonnet, Margaret R. "Comparative Reading: Catherine M. Sedgwick's Hope Leslie." Legacy 15, no. 1 (1998): 17-22.

Examines Sedgwick's novel by noting parallels and differences with works by other nineteenth-century women writers, including George Sand and Germaine de Staël.

Holly, Carol. "Nineteenth-Century Autobiographies of Affiliation: The Case of Catherine Sedgwick and Lucy Larcom." In American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by Paul John Eakin, pp. 216-34. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.

Discusses nineteenth-century women's autobiographies as texts of affiliation that present the autobiographical act as an intimate, interactive, and female event.

Karafilis, Maria. "Catherine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie: Fostering Radical Democratic Individualism in the New Nation." American Transcendental Quarterly 12, no. 4 (December 1998): 327-44.

Proposes that a conflict exists in Hope Leslie between Sedgwick's desire for an alternative model of government and her desire to foster a domestic national literature.

——. Introduction to Hope Leslie; Or, Early Times in the Massachusetts, by Catherine Maria Sedgwick, edited by Mary Kelley, pp. ix-xxxvii. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

Examines Sedgwick's most famous novel and its reception against its historical and social background.

Kelley, Mary. "Negotiating a Self: The Autobiography and Journals of Catherine Maria Sedgwick." New England Quarterly 66, no. 3 (September 1993): 366-98.

Appraises Sedgwick's autobiography and journals in the context of the larger contemporary political and ideological landscape in which they were written.

LaMonaca, Maria. "'She Could Make a Cake as Well as Books'." Women's Writing: The Elizabethan to Victorian Period 2, no. 3 (1995): 221-34.

Examines and compares the impact of Sedgwick's and Anna Jameson's "domestic advice manuals" and "conduct books" on nineteenth-century women.

Mitchell, Domhnall. "Acts of Intercourse: 'Miscegenation' in Three 19th Century American Novels." American Studies in Scandinavia 27, no. 2 (1995): 126-41.

Discusses three nineteenth-century novels—Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok, James Fenimore Cooper's The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, and Sedgwick's Hope Leslie —that imagine the possibility of union between Native Americans and whites.

Nelson, Dana. "Sympathy as Strategy in Sedgwick's Hope Leslie. "In The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America, edited by Shirley Samuels, pp. 191-202. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Contends that the sympathetic frame of reference employed by Sedgwick and other women authors in their frontier romances fostered a more positive cultural vision by attempting to promote similarities between races and cultures.

Singley, Carol J. "Catherine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie: Radical Frontier Romance." In Desert, Garden, Margin, Range: Literature on the American Frontier, edited by Eric Heyne, pp. 110-22. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992.

Examines Hope Leslie as a frontier romance that offers an alternative vision of American women and culture.

Stadler, Gustavus. "Magawisca's Body of Knowledge: Nation-Building in Hope Leslie." The Yale Journal of Criticism 12, no. 1 (spring 1999): 41-56.

Claims that by investing narrative authority in the figure of Magawisca, Sedgwick uses an individual to dramatize the public issues of conflict between the colonists and Native Americans in her novel.

Welsh, Sister Mary Michael. "An Analysis of Miss Sedgwick's Novels." In Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Her Position in the Literature and Thought of Her Time Up to 1860, pp. 21-34. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1937.

Overview of Sedgwick's best-known novels, including A New-England Tale, Hope Leslie, and The Linwoods.

OTHER SOURCES FROM GALE:

Additional coverage of Sedgwick's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 1, 74, 183, 239, 343, 254; Literature Resource Center; Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Vols. 19, 98; and Reference Guide to American Literature, Ed. 4.