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9781666921533

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Victoria Brehm makes us look deeper into Woolson's prose and motivations in order to uncover her profound concern with national events, international politics, and the ambiguities of social and political leaders. Brehm pierces through the self-protective screens that Woolson often used to mask these issues by analyzing seemingly minute references and by uncovering a complex underbody of satire, allegory, and yes, anger at a world that denies women rights. Particularly strong readings of For the Major and Horace Chase impress, but shorter works, we find, underneath romantic surfaces, also provide sharp takes on the gold standard, industrialization, and the corruptions of the gilded age. Well researched, and eloquently written, this study gives us unsuspected and rewarding apertures into a great artist's ideological concerns and methods. -- John Wharton Lowe, University of Georgia For decades, scholars have engaged in the careful work of exposing the depths beneath the surfaces of Constance Fenimore Woolson's texts - pulling a thread here and another there. Dr. Brehm's book progresses that work further than any Woolson scholarship to date. Her grasp of nineteenth-century politics and culture allows her to reveal a rich informed view of Woolson's engagement with postbellum American society. Best yet, Brehm reveals resonances between the deeply politically polarized postbellum America and the equally polarized America of our own time. She makes an irresistible case for Woolson's relevance to America today while simultaneously grounding her texts in post-Civil War America. -- Jacqueline Justice, Bowling Green State University-Firelands College

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Victoria Brehm is retired professor of American literature and helped found the Constance Fenimore Woolson Society.

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