A Renaissance for Elizabeth Stoddard

Abstract

For almost one hundred years writer Elizabeth Stoddard (1823–1902) has been absent from most critical considerations of the nineteenthcentury American literary landscape. This is despite numerous attempts at recuperation via republication, the earliest within her lifetime. The late twentieth century also saw attempts to return her to the public stage: In 1971, Johnson Reprint Corporation made available her novels The Morgensons (1862) and Temple House (1867); in 1984, Lawrence Buell and Sandra A. Zagarell presented a critical edition of the former, with additional materials, including letters and articles. These efforts importantly situated Stoddard as a crucial precursor of American Realist writing—something acknowledged by that movement’s leader, William Dean Howells—and a feminist foremother, astute in her representation of female desire and critique of the institution of marriage.