1st Edition

Rebecca Dickinson Independence for a New England Woman

By Marla Miller Copyright 2014
    224 Pages
    by Routledge

    218 Pages
    by Routledge

    Rebecca Dickinson's powerful voice, captured through excerpts from the pages of her journal, allows colonial and revolutionary-era New England to come alive. Dickinson's life illustrates the dilemmas faced by many Americans in the decades before, during, and after the American Revolution, as well as the paradoxes presented by an unmarried woman who earned her own living and made her own way in the small town where she was born. Rebecca Dickinson: Independence for a New England Woman, uses Dickinson's world as a lens to introduce readers to the everyday experience of living in the colonial era and the social, cultural, and economic challenges faced in the transformative decades surrounding the American Revolution.

    About the Lives of American Women series: selected and edited by renowned women's historian Carol Berkin, these brief biographies are designed for use in undergraduate courses. Rather than a comprehensive approach, each biography focuses instead on a particular aspect of a women's life that is emblematic of her time, or which made her a pivotal figure in the era. The emphasis is on a 'good read', featuring accessible writing and compelling narratives, without sacrificing sound scholarship and academic integrity. Primary sources at the end of each biography reveal the subject's perspective in her own words. Study questions and an annotated bibliography support the student reader.

    SERIES EDITOR'S FOREWORD AUTHOR'S PREFACE : READING AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DIARY Introduction: The Independence of Rebecca Dickinson 1 Origins and Awakenings 2 Entering the Female Economy 3 A World at War, a Soul at Peace 4 The Unraveling 5 Revolutionary Hatfield 6 Rebellion, Redux 7 Reproducing the Nation 8 Singlehood and the "Bar in the Way" 9 The "Most Dark and Puzzling Affair" 10 Twilight Conclusion: Remembering Independence Primary Sources STUDY QUESTIONS NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY INDEX

    Biography

    Marla Miller