Life in the Iron Mills: A Cultural Context Edition

Ed. Cecelia Tichi, Available August 1997 from St. Martin's P

Table of Contents

PART ONE

Introduction: Cultural and Historical Background
Chronology of Davis's Life and Times
A Note on the Text
Life in the Iron-Mills [1861 Atlantic Monthly Edition]

PART TWO: Cultural Contexts

1. Work and Class

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Village Blacksmith"

Alexis de Tocqueville, "That Aristocracy May Be Engendered by Manufactures"

A. W. Campbell, "Iron Interests of Wheeling"

Captain Willard Glazier, "Pittsburg"

John Roach, Senate Testimony from Iron Foundry Proprietor

William Weihe, Senate Testimony f om Iron Puddler and Union Leader

Jesse Claxton, J. G. Going, and N. R. Fielding, Senate Testimony from Workers of Color

Robert D. Layton, Senate Testimony from Grand Secretary of the Knights of Labor

Reese E. Lewis, "March of the Rolling-Mill Men" (song)
Felix O'Hare, "The Shoofly" (song)
Walt Whitman, "A Song for Occupations"
Oliver Wendell Holmes, From "A Rhymed Lesson"
James Russell Lowell, "Without and Within"
Andrew Carnegie, From The Gospel of Wealth
Fanny Fern, "Sewing Machines"
Fanny Fern, "The Working-Girls of New York"
Harriet Hanson Robinson, From Loom and Spindle
Anonymous, "Factory Life: Romance and Reality"
Anonymous, "My Experience as a Factory Operative"
Elizabeth E. Turner, "Factory Girl's Reverie"
Herman Melville, "The Tartarus of Maids "

2. Social Reform and the Promise of the Dawn

Orestes Brownson, From "The Laboring Classes"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, From "American Civilization"

Henry Ward Beecher, "Practical Hints

Charles Loring Brace, From The Dangerous Classes of New York

Anonymous, "In Soho on Saturday Night" (song)

Josiah Strong, "Perils_Immigration"

Josiah Strong, "The Anglo-Saxon and the World's Future"

Anna Gordon, Senate Testimony on tbe Kitchen Garden Movement

T. S. Arthur, From Ten Nights in a Bar-Room

John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Quaker of the Olden Time"

Harriet Beecher Stowe, "The Quaker Settlement" (From Uncle Tom's Cabin)

Edward Bellamy, From Looking Backward: 2000-1887

3. Art and Artists (Dave, insert link to graphics here)    [OK]

James Jackson Jarves, "An Inquiry into the Art-Conditions and Prospects of America"
James Jackson Jarves, From Art Thoughts
Anonymous, "Hints to American Artists"
William Wetmore Story, From Conversations in a Studio
Anonymous, "The Stewart Art Gallery"
Anonymous, "The Greek Slave"
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "A Sculptor's Studio" (From The Marble Faun)
Henry James, From Roderick Hudson
Wilson McDonald, Senate Testimony on the Arts and Art Education in the United States
Florence Elizabeth Cory, Senate Testimony on Industrial Art Schools for Women

4. Women and Writing: The Public Platform

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Letter to George D. Ticknor
Margaret Fuller, From "The Great Lawsuit"
Augusta Evans Wilson, From St. Elmo
Caroline Kirkland, "Literary Women "
Fanny Fern, From Ruth Hall
Lucy Larcom, From A New England Girlhood
Louisa May Alcott, From Little Women
Annie Fields, From Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher
Stowe

Bibliography

May: United States experiences economic panic and collapse, leading to mass unemployment, which persists until 1843.

Emerson, "The American Scholar."

1838

Beginning of the Underground Railroad, which assists slaves in escaping to the North. Trail of Tears: the U. S. Government forces Cherokee tribes to leave their native lands in Georgia for Indian Territory in Oklahoma, a journey that kills thousands.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), first American edition of Democracy in America (2 vole., 1835).
1840

June: World's Anti-Slavery Convention (London) refuses to admit American women delegates.

Washington Temperance Society is formed; three years later it claims to have reformed hundreds of thousands of intemperate drinkers and alcoholics.

Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.

1841

Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) attempts to reform Massachusetts prisons and insane asylums.

Emerson, Essays. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Ballads and Other Poems.
1844

April: Texas Annexation Treaty provides for admission of Texas as a territory, but the U. S. Senate resists.

September: Previously tutored by her mother, Rebecca Harding enters Washington Female Seminary.28

December: Democrat James K. Polk (1795-1849) wins presidential election, defeating Whig candidate Henry Clay (1777-1852) and abolitionist Liberty Party candidate James Birney (1792- 1857).

1845

June: Andrew Jackson dies.

July: In the first use of the phrase, the United States Magazine and Democratic Review declares the United States' "manifest destiny to overspread the continent."

December: Texas is admitted into the Union as the twenty-eighth state.

National Reform Association, which advocated the rights of workingmen, is established. Industrial Congress of the United States, a labor organization, forms in New York City.

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

Margaret Fuller (1810- 1850), Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

1846

January: De Bow's Review, a pro-slavery journal which studies southern culture, begins publication.

May: United States declares war on Mexico (1846-1848).

August: Wilmot Proviso, which would ban slavery in land acquired from Mexico, fails to pass.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) is elected to Congress from Illinois and serves from 1847 to 1849.

Herman Melville (1819-1891), Typee.

1847

Longfellow, Evangeline.

1848

January: Gold is discovered near John Sutter's (1803-1880) sawmill in California, an event that begins the Gold Rush.

February: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican War; Mexico relinquishes present-day California, New Mexico, and parts of Arizona and Nevada for $15 million.

June: Rebecca Harding graduates from Washington Female Seminary as valedictorian and returns home to Wheeling.

July: The first woman's rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York, led by Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902).Chronology of Davis's Life and Times

November: Boston Female Medical School, the first medical school for women, opens.

1849

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, "Resistance to Civil Government" (republished in 1866 as "Civil Disobedience").

1850

September: Congress issues the Compromise of 18SO, which attempts to end the conflict over slavery and includes the controversial Fugitive Slave Act.

Amelia Bloomer dons "bloomers," pantaloon trousers thought to promote women's health by freeing the body from the constraints of stiff corsets.

Susan Warner (1819-1885), The Wide, Wide World.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), The Scarlet Letter.

1851

Young Men's Christian Association (established in England in 1844) opens chapters in Boston, Massachusetts, ant Montreal, Canada. Asylum for Friendless Boys is established in New York City.

Melville, Moby-Dick.

1852

November: Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, is elected U. S. president.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), Uncle Tom's Cabin.

1853

The American, or Know-Nothing, Party is established, arguing that only native-born Americans should hold public office and calling for repeal of all naturalization laws. The Crystal Palace Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City demonstrates U. S. industrial and technological prowess.

Fanny Fern (Sara Payson Willis Parton, 1811-1872), Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-Folio.

1854

May: Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals the Missouri Compromise and heightens the slavery crisis. Senator Stephen A. Douglas (181 ?1861) of Illinois calls for letting the people decide the slavery question in the territories ("popular sovereignty")

Rebecca Harding begins submitting reviews, poems, stories, and editorials to the Wheeling Intelligencer.
Children's Aid Society is formed in New York City.

Thoreau, Walden.

1855

May: Feminist and abolitionist Lucy Stone (1818-1893) becomes the first woman officially to keep her maiden name in marriage.

Violence erupts in Kansas territory over the slavery question.

Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom.

Fern, Ruth Han. Longfellow, Song of Hiawatha.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass.

1856

May: Senator Charles Sumner (1811-1874) of Massachusetts gives the anti-slavery "Crime Against Kansas" speech and is assaulted by Congressman Preston Brooks (1819-1857) of South Carolina.

Melville, The Piazza Tales.

Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.

1857

March: Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott v. Sandford that slaves are not citizens and that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the territories.

August: Widespread economic panic.

Channing Home, a hospital for poor women, opens in Boston.

The Atlantic Monthly, edited by James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), begins publication.
1858

August-October: Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln engage in the Lincoln-Douglas debates to win the U. S. Senate seat from Illinois. Lincoln makes his "A House Divided" speech; Douglas is reelected.

Cooper Union, an adult-education institution for the working class, opens in New York City.

Religious revivalism engulfs the United States.

1859

October: John Brown (1800-1859) leads anti-slavery forces, which attempt to seize the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

December: John Brown is executed.

Rebecca Harding serves briefly as editor of the Wheeling Intelligencer.

Harriet Wilson (1808?-1870), Our Nig, first novel by an African American in the United States.
1860

February: Strikes and labor unrest, beginning with a shoemakers' strike over wages and working conditions in Lynn, Massachusetts.

November: Lincoln elected U. S. president.

December: Rebecca Harding sends Life in the Iron-Mills to The Atlantic Monthly.
South Carolina secedes from the Union.

1861

January: Rebecca receives a letter of acceptance from Atlantic editor James T. Fields (1817-1881) which includes a $50 payment and the promise of $100 for another contribution.

April: Life in the Iron-Mills is published in the Atlantic. Civil War begins when Confederate forces attack Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

May: James T. Fields rejects Rebecca Harding's story "The Deaf and the Dumb" as "gloomy," requesting that she change the title to "A Story of To-day" and rewrite the ending.

August: Northwest portion of Virginia secedes from the Confederacy, becoming first New Virginia, then West Virginia.

October: "A Story of To-day" (later published as the novel Margret Howth) begins serialization in the Atlantic. L. Clarke Davis, an editor for the Philadelphia Enquirer who admires her writing, writes to Rebecca Harding.

Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

Frederick Law Olmstead (1822- 1903), The Cotton Kingdom.

1862

Spring: L. Clarke Davis visits Rebecca Harding in Wheeling, beginning their courtship.

July: Rebecca Harding visits the Fields in Boston and the Hawthornes in Concord. She then spends a week with Clarke Davis in Philadelphia, and they become engaged.

Davis's Margret Howth: A Story of To-day is published by Ticknor and Fields of Boston.32


1863

January: Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, which frees slaves in Confederate territory.
March 5: Rebecca Harding marries L. Clarke Davis in Wheeling, and they move to his sister's home in Philadelphia.

Summer: Rebecca becomes pregnant and suffers from depression. Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), Hospital Sketches.

1864

March 20: Rebecca's father dies.

April 18: Rebecca gives birth to her first child, named Richard Harding Davis after her father.

Summer-fall: The Davises vacation at Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Rebecca's depression ends when the family moves into a home of their own in Philadelphia.

1865

April: General Lee's surrender at Appomattox ends the Civil War. John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Lincoln.

The Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, is ratified.

The Ku Klux Klan begins organizing. The Molly Maguires, a powerful Irish miners' group, becomes active (1865-1867).

Whitman, Drum Taps. Stowe, House and Home Papers.

1866

January 24: Charles Belmont Davis, thc Davises' second child, is born. Davis begins publishing stories in Galaxy under her own name.

The first Young Women's Christian Association is formed in Boston.

1867 Alfred Nobel patents dynamite. Augusta Jane Evans Wilson (1835-1909), St. Elmo.

1868

Davis's Dallas Galbraith, a novel, is published by Lippincott of Philaddphia.

Her realistic Civil War novel, Waiting for the Verdict, is published by Sheldon of New York.

President Johnson is impeached, tried, and acquitted. The Fourteenth Amendment, which permitted African Americans to be citizens of the United States, is ratified

Alcott, Little Women. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (184 ?1911), The Gates Ajar.

1869

Davis becomes a regular contributing editor to the New York Tribune, beginning a twenty-year affiliation.

Clarke becomes managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Harriet Beecher Stowe asks Davis to write for her new monthly, Hearth and Home.

Knights of Labor organize in Philadelphia. The first transcontinental railroad is completed.
1870

The Davises buy a house at 230 South Twenty-first Street, which will remain their home for the rest of their lives.

The Fifteenth Amendment, which allowed African Americans to vote, is ratified.

1871

Davis begins writing for children's presses, work that she will continue for the rest of her life.

Phelps, The Silent Partner.

1872

Nora Davis, the Davises' third child, is born.

National Labor Reform Party is founded. Susan B. Anthony is arrested for leading women voters to the polls.

1873

Davis's Kitty's Choice, or Berrytown and Other Stories, a novella and two stories, is published by Lippincott.

The nation enters a financial panic, precipitated by the failure of Jay Cooke and Co., which triggers a nationwide depression, the worst the United States had ever known. William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed, who controlled New York City Democratic Party politics in the 1860s and early 1870s, is convicted of fraud.

Alcott, Work.

1874

Davis's Jobn Andross, a novel about political corruption, is published by Orange Judd of New York.
Women's Christian Temperance Union is founded in Cleveland.

1875

Davis begins writing regular editorials and fiction pieces for the New
York Independent, an association that will continue throughout her
life.

Andrew Carnegie builds the first factory to produce Bessemer steel.

1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

1877

In response to the lingering depression and continued lowering of wages, coal miners in Martinsburg, West Virginia, begin a strike that spreads across the country, finally requiring the use of federal troops.

1878

Davis's A Law unto Herself, a novel about female independence, is published by Lippincott.

1880 The Salvation Army is established in the United States.

1881

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and others, History of Woman Suffrage.

1884 Bureau of Labor created. Equal Rights Parq formed by suffragettes.

Mark Twain (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

1886

Davis's Natasqua, a satirical novel of manners, is published by Cassell of New York as part of its Rainbow Series for young readers.

Labor unrest continues, especially among railroad workers. The Haymarket Square riots erupt in Chicago, and the American Federation of Labor is established.

1888 Edward Bellamy (185 ?1898), Looking Backward: 2000-1887.

1889

Davis resigns from the Tribune to protest editorial censorship of her articles. She becomes a weekly contributor to the Independent. Clarke leaves the Inquirer to be the Philadelphia Public Ledger's associate editor.

Jane Addarns establishes Hull-House in Chicago.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), The Gospel of Wealth.

1890

August: Richard Harding Davis's story "Gallagher" is published in Scribner's Magazine, which brings him fame.

Emily Dickinson (183 ?1886), Poems.

1891

Summer: Davis and her husband and daughter vacation in England.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), A New England Nun and Other Stories.

Hamlin Garland (1860- 1940), Main-Travelled Roads.

1892

Davis's Kent Hampden, a young person's novel and Silhouettes of American Life, a collection of thirteen stories, are published by Scribner's of New York.

Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), Uncle Remus and His Friends.

1893

The nation experiences a financial panic. The World's Columbian Exposition is held in Chicago.

1894

The Pullman Car Company strike begins railway and mining labor unrest.

1896

Davis's Doctor Warrick's Daughters, a novel of manners, is published by Harper of New York.

Klondike gold is discovered, starting a stampede the following year. Beginning of Jim Crow era, in which segregation is legalized.

1898

Davis's Frances Waldeaux, a novel of manners, is published by Harper.

The explosion of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor leads to a ten-week Spanish-American War.

1899

May 4: Richard Harding Davis marries Cecil Clark.

Fall: First mention of Nora's suffering from a recurring nervous illness.36

Charles Dana Gibson sketches the "Gibson Girl."

Kate Chopin (1851-1904), The Awakening.

Thorstein Veblen (18S7-1929), The Theory of the Leisure Class.

1901

Socialist Party founded by Eugene V. Debs and others. J. P. Morgan founds U. S. Steel Corporation.

Frank Norris (1870-1902), The Octopus.

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), Up from Slavery.
1902

Davis becomes a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post and continues contributing for several years.

1903

Wright brothers' first successful airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), The Souls of Black Folk.

Jack London (1876-1916), The Call of the Wild.

1904

December 14: L. Clarke Davis dies at home of heart disease.

Bits of Gossip, Davis's memoir, is published by Houghton Mifflin of Boston.

St. Louis hosts the St. Louis Exposition. First Olympic Games are held in America.
1905

Industrial Workers of the World is founded in Chicago.

First motion picture theater opens in Pittsburgh.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937), The House of Mirth.

1906

Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), The Jungle.

1908

Following a brief financial panic in 1907, the nation suffers rising unemployment. The first Model T Ford is manufactured. The Singer Building in New York City becomes the first U. S.

1910

September: Davis suffers a stroke while visiting her son Richard at his Mt. Kisco, New York, estate. She dies there on September 29 at the age of seventy-nine.

From section on Women and Writing


ANNIE FIELDS

Annie Fields: From The Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe

Annie Fields (183 ?1915) was thrown into the New England literary community by way of her husband, James Thomas Fields, a partner in the publishing house of Ticknor ant Fields and editor of the Atlantic. James Fields was one of the most powerful publishers in the Unitet States in the mid- nineteenth century, and Annie became the center of a kind of literary salon in New England, conversing with virtually all the major and minor writers of the day. These literary friendships became the basis of her best-known works, her books of literary reminiscence. Among these is Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston: Houghton, 1897). In the following passage, Fields highlights the difficulties Stowe faced as a professional writer attempting to support her family while attending to the never-ending domestic duties required of a nineteenth-century middle-class woman.
One of her friends at this time was anxious to get her to finish a story she had partly written, and for the conclusion of which the editor was waiting. This friend's account of difficulties is amusing, because both the ladies chose to be amused, and carried the matter off in such a humorous vein; but it easily has another side, when we consider Mrs. Stowe's health, and the work which lay before her.

"'Come, Harriet,' said I," wrote her friend, "as I found her tending one baby and watching two others just able to walk, 'where is that piece for the "Souvenir" which I promised the editor I would get from you and send on next week? You have only this one day left to finish it, and have it I must.'

'And how will you get it, friend of mine?' said Harriet. 'You will at least have to wait till I get house-cleaning over and baby's teeth through.'

"'As to house-cleaning, you can defer it one day longer; and as to baby's teeth, there is to be no end to them, as I can see. No, no; today that story must be ended. There Frederick has been sitting by Ellen and saying all those pretty things for more than a month now, and she has been turning and blushing till I am sure it is time to go to her relief. Come, it would not take you three hours at the rate you can write to finish the courtship, marriage, catastrophe, eclaircissement, and all; and this three hours' labor of your brains will earn enough to pay for all the sewing your fingers could do for a year to come. Two dollars a page, my dear, and you can write a page in fifteen minutes! Come, then, my lady housekeeper, economy is a cardinal virtue; consider the economy of the thing.'

"'But, my dear, here is a baby in my arms and two little pussies by my side, and there is a great baking down in the kitchen, and there is a "new girl" for "help," besides preparations to be made for housecleaning next week. It is really out of the question, you see.'

"'I see no such thing. I do not know what genius is given for, if it is not to help a woman out of a scrape. Come, set your wits to work, let me have my way, and you shall have all the work done and finish the story, too.'

"'Well, but kitchen affairs?'

"'We can manage them, too. You know you can write anywhere and anyhow. Just take your seat at the kitchen table with your writing weapons, and while you superintend Mina, fill up the odd snatches of time with the labors of your pen.'

"I carried my point. In ten minutes she was seated; a table with flour, rolling-pin, ginger, and lard on one side, a dresser with eggs, pork, and beans, and various cooking utensils on the other, near her an oven heating, and beside her a dark-skinned nymph, waiting orders.

"'Here, Harriet,' said I, 'you can write on this atlas in your lap; no matter how the writing looks, I will copy it.'

"'Well, well,' said she, with a resigned sort of amused look. 'Mine, you may do what I told you, while I write a few minutes, till it is time to mould up the bread. Where is the inkstand?'

"'Here it is, close by, on the top of the tea-kettle,' said I.

"At this Mina giggled, and we both laughed to see her merriment at our literary proceedings.
"I began to overhaul the portfolio to find the right sheet.

"'Here it is,' said I. 'Here is Frederick sitting by Ellen, glancing at her brilliant face, and saying something about "guardian angel," and all that-you remember?'

"'Yes, yes,' said she, falling into a muse, as she attempted to recover the thread of her story.

"'Ma'am, shall I put the pork on the top of the beans?' asked Mina.

"'Come, come,' said Harriet, laughing. 'You see how it is. Mina is a new hand and cannot do anything without me to direct her. We must give up the writing for to-day.'

"'No, no; let us have another trial. You can dictate as easily as you can write. Come, I can set the baby in this clothes-basket and give him some mischief or other to keep him quiet; you shall dictate and I will write. Now, this is the place where you left off: you were describing the scene between Ellen and her lover; the last sentence was, "Borne down by the tide of agony, she leaned her head on her hands, the tears streamed through her fingers, and her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs." What shall I write next?'

"'Mina, pour a little milk into this pearlash,* said Harriet.

"'Here,' said I, 'let me direct Mina about these matters, and write a while yourself.'

* pearlash: A refined potash, calcium carbonate.

"Harriet took the pen and patiently set herself to the work. For a while my culinary knowledge and skill were proof to all Mina's investigating inquiries, and they did not fail till I saw two pages completed.

"'You have done bravely,' said I, as I read over the manuscript; 'now you must direct Mina a while. Meanwhile dictate and I will write.'

"Never was there a more docile literary lady than my friend. Without a word of objection she followed my request.

"'I am ready to write,' said I. 'The last sentence was: "What is this life to one who has suffered as I have?" What next?'

"'Shall I put in the brown or the white bread first?' said Mina.

"'The brown first,' said Harriet.

"'What is this life to one who has suffered as I have?"' said I.

"Harriet brushed the flour off her apron and sat down for a moment in a muse. Then she dictated as follows:--

"'Under the breaking of my heart I have borne up. I have borne up under all that tries a woman,--but this thought,-oh, Henry!"'

"'Ma'am, shall I put ginger into this pumpkin?' queried Mina.

"'No, you may let that alone just now,' replied Harriet. She then proceeded:--

'"I know my duty to my children. I see the hour must come. You must take them, Henry; they are my last earthly comfort."'

"'Ma'am, what shall I do with these egg-shells and all this truck here?' interrupted Mina.
"'Put them in the pail by you,' answered Harriet.

""'They are my last earthly comfort,"' said I. 'What next?'

"She continued to dictate:--

""'You must take them away. It may be-perhaps it must be--that I shall soon follow, but the breaking heart of a wife still pleads, 'a little longer, a little longer.'"'

"'How much longer must the gingerbread stay in?' inquired Mina.

"'Five minutes,' said Harriet.

""'A little longer, a little longer,"' I repeated in a dolorous tone, and we burst into a laugh.

"Thus we went on, cooking, writing, nursing, and laughing, till I finally accomplished my object. The piece- was finished, copied, and the next day sent to the editor."

-----. "Rebecca Harding Davis: A Continuing Misattribution." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 5.1 (1988): 33-34.

-----. "Rebecca Harding Davis: From Romanticism to Realism." American Literary Realism 21.2 (1989): 4-20.

. "Redefining the Feminine: Women and Work in Rebecca Harding Davis's 'In the Market.'" Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 8.2 (1992): 118-32.

Hesford, Walter. "Literary Contexts of 'Life in the Iron-Mills.'" American Literahure 49 (1977-78): 70-85.

Hood, Richard A. "Framing a 'Life in the Iron Mills.'" Studies in American Fiction 23 (1995): 73-84.

Lang, Amy Schrager. "Class and the Strategies of Sympathy." The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Gntury America. Ed. Shirley Samuels. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. 128 `19.

Lasseter, Janice Milner. "'Boston in the Sixties': Rebecca Harding Davis's View of Boston and Concord during the Civil War." The Concord Saunterer 3 (1995): 64-86.

Malpezzi, Frances M. "Sisters in Protest: Rebecca Harding Davis and Tillie Olsen." RE: Artes Liberales 12.2 (1986): 1-9.

Molyneaux, Maribel W. "Sculpture in the Iron Mills: Rebecca Harding Davis's Korl Woman." Women's Studies 17 (1990): 157-77.

Pattee, Fred Lewis. Development of the American Short Story: An Historical Overview. 1923. New York: Biblio, 1996.

Pfaelzer, Jean. "Domesticity and the Discourse of Slavery: 'John Lamar' and 'Blind Tom' by Rebecca Harding Davis." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 38.1 (1992): 31-56.

. "Rebecca Harding Davis: Domesticity, Social Order, and the Industrial Novel." International Journal of V7omen's Studies 4 (1981): 231 14.

. "The Sentimental Promise and the Utopian Myth: Rebecca Harding Davis's 'The Harmonists' and Louisa May Alcott's 'Transcendental Wild Oats.'" American Transcendental Quarterly 3 (1989): 85- 99c

. "Subjectivity as Feminist Utopia." Utopian and Science Fichon by Women: Worlds of Difference. Eds. Jane L. Donawerth and Carol A. Kolmerten. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1994. 93-106.

Quinn, Arthur Hobson. American Fiction: An Historical Survey. New York: Appleton, 1936.

Rose, Jane Atteridge. "The Artist Manque in the Fiction of Rebecca Harding Davis." Writing the Woman Artist: Essays on Poetics, Politics, and Portraiture. Ed. Suzanne W. Jones. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1991. 155-74.

----- . "Images of Self: The Example of Rebecca Harding Davis and Charlotte Perkins Gilman." English Language Notes 29.4 (1992): 70-78.

-----. "Reading 'Life in the Iron-Mills' Contextually: A Key to Rebecca Harding Davis's Fiction." Conversations: Contemporary Critical Theory and the Teaching of Literature. Eds. Charles Moran and Elizabeth F. Penfield. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1990. 187-99.

Scheiber, Andrew J. "An Unknown Infrastructure: Gender, Production, and Aesthetic Exchange in Rebecca Harding Davis's 'Life in the Iron-Mills.'" Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 11.2 (1994): 101-17.

Seltzer, Mark. "The Still Life." American Literary History 3 (1991): 455-86.

Shurr, William H. "'Life in the Iron-Mills': A Nineteenth-Gntury Conversion Narrative." American Transcendental Quarterly 5 (1991): 245-57.

Tichi, Cecdia. New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from the Puritans through Whitman. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Yellin, Jean Fagan. "The 'Feminization' of Rebecca Harding Davis." American Literary History 2 (1990): 203-19.

On Work and Class
Blumin, Stuart M. The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760- 1900. New York: Cambridge UP, 1989.

Bromell, Nicholas K. By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.

Burke, Martin J. The Conundrum of Class: Public Discourse on the Social Order in America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 199S.

Curtis, Susan. A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991.

Dimock, Wai Chee, and Michael T. Gilmore. Rethinking Class: Literary Studies and Social Formations. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.

Gutman, Herbert G. et al., eds. Who Built America: Working Peopk and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society. 2 vols. New York: Pantheon, 1989.

Hawke, David Freeman. Nuts and Bolts: A History of American Technology, 1 776-186Q. New York: Harper, 1988.

Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Dcstiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Gmbridge and London: Harvard UP, 1981.

"Industries, Extraction and Processing." The New Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropasdia. Vol. 21. 385-528

Kasson, John. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America. New York: Penguin, 1977.

Keir, Malcom. The Epic of Industry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1926.

Marcus, Alan I., and Howard Segal. Technology in America: A Brief History. San Diego: Harcourt, 1989.

Rodgers, Daniel T. The Work Ethic in Industrial America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974.

Roediger, David. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso, 1991.

Samuels, Shirley, ed. The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth- Century America. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.

Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788- 1850. New York: Oxford UP, 1984.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present. Rev. Ed. New York: Harper, 1995.

On Social Reform

Abzug, Robert H. Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.

Davis, David Brion, ed. Antebellum Reform. New York: Harper, .

Freedman, Estelle B. Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1981.

Kasson, John F. Rudeness and Civility. New York: Hill, 1990

Mintz, Steven. Moralists and Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.

Tichi, Cecelia. New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature f om the Puritans to Whitman. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Walters, Ronald G. American Reformers, 1815-1X60. New York: Hill, 1978.

On Art and Artists

Craven, Wayne. Sculpture in America. New York: Crowell, 1968.

Fryd, Vivien Green. Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815- 1860. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1992.

Kasson, Joy S. Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1990.

Vance, William L. America's Rome. Vol. 1. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1989.

On Women and Writing

Baym, Nina. Feminism and American Literary History. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992.

Conrad, Susan Phinney. Perish the Thought: Intellectual Women in Romantic America, 183 ?1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1976.

Davidson, Cathy N., and Linda Wagner-Martin, eds. The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Hedrick, Joan D. Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.

Kelley, Mary. Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford UP, 1984.

Pattee, Fred Lewis. The Feminine Fifties. New York: Appleton, 1940.

Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 1982.