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This chapter presents an overview of the Swedish works sent to the Woman’s Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and also explores the networks suggested by the connections between the works, and their authors, that this particular selection reveals. The leading women’s rights organization at the time, the Fredrika Bremer Association, was asked to organize the Swedish exhibit at the Woman’s Library and the selection of works conveys an image of the Swedish female literary arena reflecting the ideals of this organization while leaving out dissenting voices. Nevertheless, a study of the Swedish selection for the Woman’s Library offers insight into the strategies employed by Swedish women in the late nineteenth century to further the rights of women, as well as to give women’s literary and artistic contributions the same recognition as that afforded works by male writers. In fact, many of the works on the list of works sent to the Woman’s Library have been introduced, reviewed, promoted, and/or criticized by other writers included in the selection, thus suggesting a close network of women writers.

The works of American writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867) were widely read in nineteenth-century Britain and other parts of Europe and her early novel Redwood (1824) was translated into several languages, including French, German, and Swedish. However, in these translations her fellow American James Fenimore Cooper was named the author. At the time, the origin of translated works was often obscured as translators removed or changed the names of authors and sometimes made extensive changes in the content of the text. A closer look at the works of Sedgwick translated into Swedish serves as a case in point, as library databases suggest that three of her novels were translated into Swedish, but, ...  

This paper explores the role of books in American antebellum domestic fiction. Written primarily for middle-class readers, domestic fiction offers advice on how to create an ideal home and in these ideal homes the presence of books is necessary. In an era plagued by a volatile national economy, monetary assets proved an unstable basis for class affiliation. Domestic fiction, however, presents the ownership of books as an alternative foundation for class status. As a result, rather than being based on economic resources, which might lose value overnight, thus causing a plunge on the social ladder, in these tales, middle-class status transcends economic status as it becomes synonymous with the ownership and appreciation of books and the personal qualities books were expected to foster.

This study explores the role of learning and education in American historical fiction written in the 1820s. The United States has been, and still is, commonly considered to be hostile to scholarly learning. In novels and short stories of the 1820s, however, learning and education are recurrent themes, and this dissertation shows that the attitudes to these issues are more ambivalent than hitherto acknowledged. The 1820s was a period characterized by a political struggle, expressed as a battle between intellectuals, represented by the sitting president, John Quincy Adams, a Harvard professor, and anti-intellectuals, headed by the war hero Andrew Jackson. The battle over the place of scholarly learning in the U.S. was played out not only on the political scene but also in historical fiction, where the themes of learning and education become vehicles for exploring national identity. In these texts, whose aim is often to establish an impressive national history, scholarly learning carries negative connotations as it is linked to the former colonizer Britain and also symbolizes social stratification. However, it also stands for civilization and progress, qualities felt to be necessary for the nation to come into its own. The conflicting views and anxieties surrounding the issues of learning and education tend to center on a recurrent character in these texts, the learned person.

After providing an overview of how the themes of learning and education are treated in historical narratives from the 1820s, this dissertation focuses on works of three writers: Hobomok (1824) and The Rebels (1825) by Lydia Maria Child, The Prairie (1827) by James Fenimore Cooper, and Hope Leslie (1827) by Catharine Maria Sedgwick.