Catharine Maria Sedgwick

A novel of two families wrestling with questions of honor, class, loyalty, democracy, and independence during the American Revolution. In The Linwoods, Catharine Maria Sedgwick illuminates the American character and explores issues of civic virtue and national identity in the early republic, through the lives of two families: the Linwoods, dutiful loyalists, and the Lees, passionate revolutionaries. At the novel's heart is Isabella Linwood, a bright and independent young woman who will transform from a proud Tory to ardent Rebel, challenging not only British rule but its accepted social, economic, and political institutions, including the aristocracy, slavery, and patriarchal authority.

Set in seventeenth-century New England, Hope Leslie (1827) portrays early American life and celebrates the role of women in building the republic. A counterpoint to the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, it challenges the conventional view of Indians, tackles interracial marriage and cross-cultural friendship, and claims for women their rightful place in history. At the center of the novel are two friends. Hope Leslie, a spirited thinker in a repressive Puritan society, fights for justice for the Indians and asserts the independence of women. Magawisca, the passionate daughter of a Pequot chief, braves her father's wrath to save a white man and risks her freedom to reunite Hope with her long-lost sister, captured as a child by the Pequots and now married to Magawisca's brother. Amply plotted, with unforgettable characters, Hope Leslie is a rich, compelling, deeply satisfying novel.

"As one of America's first woman writers, Sedgwick was a literary pioneer. In her autobiography and journals she reflected frequently on authorship and the celebrity that accompanied it. The Power of Her Sympathy provides, in Catharine Maria Sedgwick's own words, a revealing entree into the life and times of one of the most important and visible women in antebellum America."--Publisher's description.

The false values of city life found in fashionable New York social circles are contrasted unfavorably with the agrarian utopia of Clarenceville, New York.

The Early American Women Writers series offers rare works of fiction by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women, each reprinted in its entirety, each with a foreword by General Editor Cathy N. Davidson, who places the novel in a historical and literary perspective. Written in 1822, A New-England Tale is the first of the many novels, tales, and short magazine pieces Catharine Sedgwick published during her lifetime. The story of an orphan girl in rural New England and the moral trials she faces as she grows up, this early example of the popular nineteenth-century women's novel provides a unique look at the religious and social climate at this crucial period in America's national development. Addressing many of the complex religious, political, and philosophical issues of the time, as well as concerns of the woman writer, A New-England Tale is a classic story of a young woman's moral and material triumphs.

Book digitized by Google from the library of the New York Public Library and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

Provides an introduction to the parks and the movement to preserve the redwoods, the world's tallest trees. Explores redwood natural history, the work of restoring logged lands, North Coast Indian Culture. Includes a travel guide and reference material for touring the parks.