1st Edition

Fiction by Nineteenth-Century Women Writers A New England Sampler

Edited By Thomas A. Maik Copyright 1999

    In an era following the Civil War which saw change and transformation everywhere, new magazines emerged to record and report the change. Responding to the call for material to fill their pages, writers in regions such as New England, the West, and the South answered, most often with short stories. In fact, short fiction became the literature of choice for an emerging mass audience. And increasingly the voices of women writers found resonance in the pages of Harper's New Monthly ,Putnam's , and Galaxy , to name a few of the newly established magazines. In New England, writers such as Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Sarah Johnson Prichard, and Rose Terry Cooke found a voice within the pages of these magazines. Although read widely in the late nineteenth century, increasingly these women writers-with a few exceptions-began to be marginalized early-on in the twentieth century. Besides expanding the canon, this collection of selected short stories by these seven New England writers attempts to restore what has been for many of them in this century either a diminished or even a lost voice.

    Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) Mis' Elderkin's Pitcher The Atlantic Monthly, September 1858 * Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892) Ann Potter's Lesson The Atlantic Monthly, September 1858, Squire Paine's Conversion Harper's New Montly, March 1878 * Sarah Johnson Prichard (1830-1909) On Sand Island The Atlantic Monthly, May 1877 * Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) The Brothers The Atlantic Montly, November 1863, Scarlet Stockings Putnam's Magazine, July 1869 * Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835-1921) Miss Moggaridge's Provides The Atlantic Montly, January 1871 * Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) A Lost Lover The Atlantic Montly, March 1878, Tom's Husband The Atlantic Monthly, February 1882, Marsh Rosemary The Atlantic Monthly, May 1886 * Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) A Gatherer of Simples Harper's New Monthly, October 1884, Evelina's Garden Harper's New Monthly, June 1896, The Revolt of Sophia Lane Harper's New Monthly, December 1903

    Biography

    Thomas A. Maik