Description: Traces literary and social connections among three American women navigating the changing political landscape of 1860s and '70s Italy.
Brief description: Etta M. Madden is Clif & Gail Smart Professor of English and Assistant Department Head at Missouri State University. As a recipient of a William J. Fulbright award, she served as a Senior Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Catania in Sicily. Her books include Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias (coedited with Martha L. Finch); Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies; and Selections from Eliza Leslie.
Review Quotes:
"Among the growing body of scholarship on the role of women in nineteenth-century transatlantic networks, Etta Madden's Engaging Italy deserves attention for its impressive, meticulous archival research in unearthing the lives and writings of three relatively unknown US women who inhabited the changing political landscape of Italy during the 1860s and 1870s ... This well-documented study is a valuable addition to the understanding of the compounded cultural and political relations between the US and Italy in the nineteenth century from a refreshingly new perspective." -- ALH Online Review
"Madden's book allows an unprecedented, close look at a particular slice of nineteenth-century society, the American community in Rome, which may now have been forgotten but deeply influenced Italian culture and left some tangible traces ... Besides its obvious archival and scholarly importance, Madden's book succeeds in spreading the diffusive light of these women, who did more than their times expected of them." -- Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature
"Madden is a first-rate, meticulous scholar. While many readers will not be familiar with Gould, Marsh, and Brewster, Madden's accessible, lively prose and engaging storytelling bring these women to life and make the case for their significance in the larger context of nineteenth-century transatlanticism and transnational networks." -- Whitney Womack Smith, coeditor of Race and Transatlantic Identities