Description: E.D.E.N. Southworth was one of the most popular and prolific writers of the nineteenth century and her Capitola Black, or Black Cap - a cross-dressing, adventure-seeking girl-woman - was so well-loved that the book was serialized three times between 1859 and 1888 and was dramatized in forty different versions. There are bandits, true-loves, evil men, long-lost mothers, and sweet women friends in Capitola's future - not to mention thunder storms, kidnap attempts, and duels. The pace is fast, the action wonderfully unbelievable. This is escape literature at its nineteenth-century best, with a woman at its center who makes you feel strong, daring, and reckless.
Review Quotes: The Hidden Hand was a runaway best-seller when it was published in 1859; for years afterward, daring parents named their daughters Capitola, venturous women. ... Fun to read and an excellent text for simultaneously demonstrating the existence of 19th-century literary stereotypes of women and showing how one writer reveled in exploding them.-- "Choice"