Description: The first large-scale, collaborative study of women's voices and their vital role in the American transcendentalist movement. Many of its seventeen distinguished scholars work from newly recovered archives, and all offer fresh readings of understudied topics and texts, shedding light on female contributions.
Brief description: HELEN R. DEESE is the Caroline Healey Dall editor for the Massachusetts Historical Society and a professor of English emerita at Tennessee Technological University. She lives in Flint and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her books include Robert Lowell: Essays on the Poetry (coedited with Steven Gould Axelrod), Daughter of Boston, and volumes in the Selected Journals of Caroline Healey Dall.
Review Quotes: An astonishing record of scholarship that examines transcendentalism from the perspective of women writers. The twenty essays in this collection (and the 'interludes' of primary texts interwoven throughout the volume) are proof that women contributed directly and positively to the movement of transcendentalism. No one who reads these outstanding essays and engaging primary materials will doubt that fact.--Susan Belasco "editor of Stowe in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates"