The Cultural Work of the Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess

Annie Adams Fields and Mary Gladstone Drew
1. Auflage 2002
ISBN: 978-1-349-63563-4
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 274 g

The Cultural Work of the Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess explores the influence well-placed, energetic women had on literary and political culture in the U.S. and in England in the years 1870-1920. Fields, an American, was first married to James T. Fields, a prominent Boston publisher; after his death she became companion to Sarah Orne Jewett, one of the foremost New England writers. Gladstone was a daughter of William Gladstone, one of Great Britain's most famous Prime Ministers. Both became well known as hostesses, entertaining the leading figures of their day; both also kept journals and wrote letters in which they recorded those figures' conversations. Susan K. Harris reads these records to exhibit the impact such women had on the cultural life of their times. The Cultural Work of the Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess shows how Fields and Gladstone negotiated alliances, won over key figures to their parties' designs, and fought to develop major cultural institutions ranging from the Organization of Boston Charities to London's Royal College of Music.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Harris, S.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: The Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess The Hostess as a Diarist The Hostess as a Correspondent Moral Landscapes: Mary Gladstone's Reading Community The Hostess as the Historian of a Reading Community: Annie Fields Balancing Acts: The Hostess and the New Bureaucratic Order

Über Autor(innen)

SUSAN K HARRIS currently is Professor of American Literature at Penn State
University, University Park. Previously, she taught for fifteen years at Queens
College, of the City University of New York. Her publications include (Cambridge University Press, 1996); (Cambridge University Press, 1990); and (University of Missouri Press, 1982). She has also edited Mark Twain's (Houghton Mifflin, 2000); Harriet Beecher Stowe's (Penguin, 1999); and (The Library of America, 1994). Her essays have appeared in collections published by Oxford, Johns Hopkins, and Rutgers University presses, and in journals such as , , and . She has edited , and has served on advisory boards for , , and the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.