Mary Kelley is Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. The author of Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America, she has also coauthored The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women’s Rights and Woman’s Sphere. Most recently, she edited The Portable Margaret Fuller.
Catharine Maria Sedgwick (December 28, 1789 – July 31, 1867) was one of the most notable female novelists of the early nineteeth century. She wrote works set in the colonial and early American periods, and combined a naturalistic and romantic style with protests against Puritan oppressiveness. Her spirited female characters stood in direct contrast to the traditional roles of women of the period.
