Nineteenth-Century American Women Write Religion

Nineteenth-century American womens culture was immersed in religious experience and female authors of the era employed representations of faith to various cultural ends. Focusing primarily on non-canonical texts, this collection explores the diversity of religious discourse in nineteenth-century womens literature. The contributors examine fiction, political writings, poetry, and memoirs by professional authors, social activists, and women of faith, including Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Angelina and Sarah Grimk, Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, Harriet E. Wilson, Sarah Piatt, Julia Ward Howe, Julia A. J. Foote, Lucy Mack Smith, Rebecca Cox Jackson, and Fanny Newell. Embracing the complexities of lived religion in womens culture-both its repressive and its revolutionary potential-Nineteenth-Century American Women Write Religion articulates how American women writers adopted the language of religious sentiment for their own cultural, political, or spiritual ends.