Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women

393 Pages·2010·2.45 MB·English

by  Barbara Sicherman

WELL-READ LIVES
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WELL-READ LIVES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women
Barbara Sicherman
The University of North Carolina Press . Chapel Hill
© 2010 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker and set in Minion by Graphic Composition, Inc. Manufactured in the United
States of America. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Commit-
tee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North
Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-P ublication Data
Sicherman, Barbara.
Well-read lives : how books inspired a generation of American women / Barbara Sicherman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8078-3308-7 (alk. paper)
1. Women — Books and reading — Social aspects — United States — History — 19th century. 2. Girls — Books
and reading — Social aspects — United States — History — 19th century. 3. Women and literature — United
States — History — 19th century. I. Title.
z1039.w65s53 2010
028⬘ .9082 — dc22
2009039480
Earlier versions of chapter 1 appeared in “Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text,” in U.S. History
as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays, ed. Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-H arris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); of chapter 4, in “Sense and Sensibility: A Case Study of
Women’s Reading in Late-V ictorian America,” in Reading in America: Literature and Social History, ed. Cathy
N. Davidson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); and of chapter 5, in “Reading and Ambition:
M. Carey Thomas and Female Heroism,” American Quarterly 45 (March 1993): 73–103.
Portions of chapter 2 appeared in “Reading and Middle-C lass Identity in Victorian America: Cultural
Consumption, Conspicuous and Otherwise,” in Reading Acts: U.S. Readers’ Interactions with Literature, 1800–
1950, ed. Barbara Ryan and Amy M. Thomas (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), and in “Ideolo-
gies and Practices of Reading,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 3, The Industrial Book, 1840–1880, ed.
Scott E. Casper et al. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Portions of the epilogue appeared in “Connecting Lives: Women and Reading, Then and Now,” in Women
in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed.
James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).
14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
IN MEMORY OF
Jeannette Bailey Cheek and Janet Wilson James
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Contents
Introduction: Books and Lives . 1
Part I. Young Women’s Reading in the Gilded Age
one. Reading Little Women . 13
two. Women and the New Cultural Landscape of the Gilded Age . 37
three. Young Women’s Ways of Reading . 57
Part II. Privileged Readers
four. (Reading as) A Family Af air . 79
The Hamiltons of Fort Wayne
five. Reading and Ambition . 109
M. Carey Thomas and Female Heroism
six. Working Her Way through Culture . 135
Jane Addams and Literature’s Dual Legacy
Part III. Reading without Privilege
seven. Hull-H ouse as a Cultural Space . 165
eight. New Books, New Lives . 193
Jewish Immigrant Women, Reading, and Identity
nine. With Pen and Voice . 221
Ida B. Wells, Race, Literature, and Politics
Epilogue: From Then to Now . 251
Notes . 259
Selected Bibliography . 337
Acknowledgments . 357
Index . 361
Illustrations
Frontispiece, Ednah Dow Cheney, Louisa May Alcott:
The Children’s Friend (1888) . 15
Winslow Homer, The New Novel (1877) . 64
The Hamilton cousins of Fort Wayne . 82
“The three As”: Alice Hamilton, Allen Hamilton Williams,
and Agnes Hamilton . 99
“The Friday Night,” Baltimore feminist literary circle . 122
Jane Addams, ca. 1880 . 145
Jane Addams, ca. 1888–92 . 168
Jane Addams with a young girl, ca. 1930 . 188
Portrait of Rose Cohen, ca. 1918–20 . 199
Portrait of Mary Antin, ca. 1915 . 209
Children at charge desk, Hamilton Fish Branch Library,
New York City, ca. 1910 . 217
Ida B. Wells, ca. 1893–94 . 239