BARBARA SICHERMAN is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American Institutions and Values, Emerita, at Trinity College. She is author of Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters and The Quest for Mental Health in America, 1880-1917, and coeditor of Notable American Women: The Modern Period.
Well-Read Lives deftly balances the big picture of Gilded Age
literary culture with the specificity and uniqueness of its
individual subjects. With nuance and insight, Sicherman makes a
convincing case that private reading practices had a profound
impact on Progressive women's public endeavors.--Journal of
American History
Well-Read Lives provides a highly accessible, engaging examination
of the latent potential in the female literary culture of the
Gilded Age....This is a rewarding look into the power of reading to
transform lives.--H-Net Reviews
[Sicherman] writes beautifully, evoking the culture and milieu of
late 19th-century America with sensitivity and great depth. . . .
Sicherman's scholarship is particularly laudable because of the
nuance she brings to the individual women portrayed. Hers is not a
volume of sweeping generalizations, but of careful representations
of the desires, values, and personal mythologies each of these
women cultivated to become the kind of heroine each desired to
be.--Books & Culture
A beautifully crafted monograph. . . . Highly
recommended.--Choice
An elegant historical survey. . . . Sicherman's well-chosen
examples . . . make a good case for her argument that reading
mattered crucially.--American Historical Review
An important book for those interested in issues of gender,
literacy, or nineteenth-century American life. . . . A fine example
of how historical scholarship about these issues can move between
specific case studies and generalized trends or patterns.--Clio
Beautifully evokes a world in which women read to construct
identity and build community. . . . Elegantly written essays . . .
represent a significant contribution to the history of print
culture in America. . . . [An] invaluable monograph.--Indiana
Magazine of History
Great depth of scholarship and insightful analysis. With its
wonderful readability it should also appeal to a more general
audience, and will contribute to contemporary conversations about
reading in a way that helps us avoid uninformed comparisons between
reading today and in the past.--SHARP: Society for the History of
Authorship, Reading, and Publishing
Sicherman's analysis deepens our understanding of the nature of
reading itself, exuding some of the very magic that books clearly
held for these young women. . . . An extraordinary contribution to
the history of the book, to women's history, and to our
understanding of reading's power as a cultural resource for
change.--Legacy
This book offers a wonderful look into the reading lives of many
women and should be praised for that contribution.--Southern
Historian
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