“What Would Become of My Literary Career?”: Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Stoddard, and the Limits of Literary Traditions

Abstract

Abstract: In The Hermaphrodite (ca. 1846) and “Collected by a Valetudinarian” (1870), Julia Ward Howe and Elizabeth Stoddard indulge in fantasies in which their protagonists, Laurence and Alicia, embrace fully Romantic modes of authorship. Laurence and Alicia can fulfill Romantic ideals of authorship partly because they publish their work through the circulation of ideas rather than in printed, mass-produced form; they also embrace life writing as a genre and explore the aesthetics of manuscripts’ materiality. Through these characters, Howe and Stoddard explore the costs and consequences of self- and literary authorship at the intersections of two overlapping mid-nineteenth-century media traditions: nonprint salon and manuscript cultures and the more recent tradition of commercial print culture. Even as The Hermaphrodite and “Collected” emphasize life writing’s artistry and authenticity and showcase nonprint modes of authorship and circulation as a way of embracing literary and personal autonomy, they also reveal those pathways as imperfect. When read together, these works neither condemn one tradition nor condone the other. Rather, they ask readers to reassess—and address—critical paradigms that limit conceptions of authorship and literary careers.