As these pieces demonstrate, Woolson offered keen observations on the issues she cared most deeply about, namely the cultural and political transformation of the United States in the wake of the Civil War, the status of women writers and artists in the nineteenth century, and the growing implications of nationalism and imperialism." "This collection features selections from each of the three distinct periods of Woolson's career and includes a chronology of her life and travels. Focusing primarily on Woolson's short stories, editors Victoria Brehm and Sharon L. Dean also include a representative letter, poem, and travel sketch for each section."--BOOK JACKET.
Five stories of provincial life in the Great Lakes region by one of nineteenth-century America’s most noteworthy female authors. Constance Fenimore Woolson was renowned in her time for her novels and short stories evoking the regional culture of the Great Lakes. Nearly forgotten by contemporary readers, her work and reputation have enjoyed a significant resurgence in recent years. This collection presents five of her most beloved short stories: “Solomon,” “Wilhelmina,” “St. Clair Flats,” “The Lady of Little Fishing,” and “Macarius the Monk.” Originally published in 1875, this collection showcases Woolson’s insight into the quiet dramas of rural American life in the nineteenth century—animated by thwarted loves, familial tensions, and divisions of race and class—as well as her ear for regional dialect and her concern for nature and the environment.
A landmark of literary recovery: the first major edition of an overlooked genius who in her lifetime was considered 19th-century America's greatest woman writer In the eyes of her contemporaries, Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) ranked with George Eliot as one of the two greatest women writers of the English language. She wrote fiction of remarkable intellectual power that outsold those of her male contemporaries Henry James and Willian Dean Howells. James enshrined memories of his long, complicated friendship with Woolson in The Beast in the Jungle and The Wings of the Dove, and more recently Colm Tobin treated the relationship in his novel The Master. But Woolson's close association with James, and her likely suicide in Venice, have tended to overshadow her own literary accomplishments, pigeonholing her as a martyr to the male literary establishment. This volume, the most comprehensive gathering of Woolson's stories to date, represents the culmination of decades of recovery work done by scholars, and puts the focus back on the work, where it belongs. Set variously in the Great Lakes region, the post-Civil War South, and Europe, Woolson's short stories often concern outsiders of one kind or another--prophets and misfits living in remote landscapes, uneducated coal miners, impoverished spinsters, neglected nuns, a haunted caretaker of the dead, destitute southerners, and female artists driven to extreme behavior as they seek the admiration or approval of established (male) critics or writers. Woolson's minute realism captures both the social texture of her time and the inner emotional lives of these overlooked and marginalized characters. Most of all her writings startle us with their simmering intensity, their sensual descriptions of the environment, and refusal to smooth out the ambiguities and tensions that inevitably result from human efforts to communicate and connect. Her fiction is deeply human, resonating with a power across the centuries that makes them remarkably modern for today's readers.
The acclaimed nineteenth-century American author draws on her experiences living in Venice in this short story collection. Constance Fenimore Woolson’s reputation as a great American novelist has only increased as new generations have discovered her works. Known for fiction that evokes the Great Lakes region of her youth, Woolson later traveled to Europe and eventually settled in Venice. This period resulted in a series of travel sketches as well as two posthumously published story collections. Along with the title story, this collection includes “A Transplanted Boy,” “A Florentine Experiment,” “A Waitress,” and “At the Chateau of Corinne.”
To celebrate her forthcoming biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson, Anne Boyd Rioux has selected the best of this classic writer’s stories. Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894) was one of the few nineteenth-century women writers considered the equal of her male peers. Harper & Brothers was so enamored of her work that the firm agreed to publish whatever she could write. In this gathering, Rioux has chosen fiction over the course of Woolson’s life, including “In Sloane Street,” never published since it first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. Woolson’s stories travel from the rural Midwest to the deep South and then across the Atlantic to Italy and England. Her strong characters and indelible settings provide continuity throughout this collection as do her concerns with passion, creativity, imagination, and the demands of society. Whether portraying the keeper of a Union soldiers’ cemetery in the defeated South, a woman writer whose genius goes unrecognized, or the ex-pat denizens of Florence, Woolson’s deft characterization and subtlety create a broad landscape of Americans and their ways no matter where they lived.
Though born in the Northeast and raised in the Midwest, Constance Fenimore Woolson (the grand-niece of renowned American author James Fenimore Cooper) spent many summers traveling in Florida and throughout the South. Woolson draws on her life experiences as an outsider in that often intensely insular culture to craft the insightful and sensitive stories and vignettes collected in Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.