Between the Novel and the News

"While American literary history has long acknowledged the profound influence of journalism on canonical male writers, Sari Edelstein argues that American women writers were also influenced by a dynamic relationship with the mainstream press. From the early republic through the turn of the twentieth century, she offers a comprehensive reassessment of writers such as Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Harriet Jacobs, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Drawing on slave narratives, sentimental novels, and realist fiction, Edelstein examines how advances in journalism--including the emergence of the penny press, the rise of the story-paper, and the birth of eyewitness reportage--shaped not only a female literary tradition but also gender conventions themselves."--Publisher description.