This week's readings on the experience of the Civil War for African-Americans sparked a lengthy discussion of America's suppressed histories. We read Susie King Taylor's Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, published in 1902, as well as speeches by Frederick Douglass, and a story published in 1864 in Harper's Weekly, “Tippo Saib." We also read two critical articles, one of which explained the long…
I have been rereading Woolson’s 1886 novel East Angels with my class on Henry James and the Women Who Influenced Him. I haven’t taught one of Woolson’s novels before because they are not in print. But now there is a reprint of the original novel available by a publisher called Forgotten Books. It’s not perfect, and the students have complained that the type…
I returned yesterday from the tenth biennial conference of the Constance Fenimore Woolson Society. As always, it was intellectually stimulating and just plain fun. The congeniality of this group of scholars is like nothing I’ve experienced before. From the founders of the society eighteen years ago to the new graduate students, everyone is supportive and eager to share their work. There is no…
Yesterday was Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Woolson never visited New Orleans, which is a shame. She wrote such amazing stories about post-Reconstruction Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. I would love to see what her keen, sympathetic eye would have seen in 1870s New Orleans. She noted many times how foreign Florida, in particular, seemed. How foreign would New Orleans have been! Woolson…