Books in the Early American Women Writers series

The `sentimental novel', in the tradition established by Samuel Richardson, was very popular in post-revolutionary America. This novel and `Charlotte Temple' were two of the most successful examples.

The Early American Women Writers series offers rare works of fiction by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women, each reprinted in its entirety, each introduced by Cathy N. Davidson, who places the novel in an historical and literary perspective. Ranging from serious cautionary tales aboutmoral corruption to amusing and trenchant social satire, these books provide today's reader with a unique window into the earliest American popular fiction and way of life. First published in 1801, Female Quixotism is a boisterous, rollicking anti-romance and literary satire. It takes place in the fictional village of L---, Pennsylvania, where its central character Dorcas Sheldon--who styles herself the romantic "Dorcasina"--sets out on a quixotic quest for thekind of romantic love portrayed in her favorite English novels. Having rejected the prosaic yet honorable advances of her first suitor, "Lysander," Dorcasina narrowly escapes marriage to a series of unscrupulous rogues interested mostly in her considerable fortune. Moving from one misadventure toanother, the heroine's journey ends in a lonely old age bereft of romantic illusion. Female Quixotism was written during a period of self-definition for the fledgling American republic, and offers a telling glimpse of gender, race, and class issues--as volatile then as they are today. Its woman's-eye view of the life and literature of the age provides a tragicomic parody ofthe limited choices available to women in a society dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal.

Like `The Coquette' this novel was immensely popular in its day and was in fact the most popular novel in America until `Uncle Tom's Cabin'.

A novel writen in 1822 concerning the moral and religious development of a young orphan girl in rural New England. An intriguing sketch of the social, political, and religious climate of early America, and of the methods of representation by early women writers.