Composing selves : Southern women and autobiography / Peggy Whitman Prenshaw.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman.

Series:

Southern literary studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Southern States--Biography--History and criticism.

Women.

American prose literature.

Autobiography.

Autobiography--Women authors.

Southern States.

Biography.

Southern States--Biography--History and criticism.

Autobiography--Women authors--History and criticism.

Autobiography--Southern States--History and criticism.

American prose literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

American prose literature--Women authors.

American prose literature--Southern States--History and criticism.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

x, 331 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2011]

Summary:

Prenshaw, professor emerita of Southern studies at Louisiana State University, looks at the life writing of 18 Southern women authors, analyzing various issues such as racial consciousness and the deflection of personal achievement. All of the authors and works presented came of age during the late southern Victorian period, 1861-1930s, from Belle Kearney's A Slaveholder's Daughter (1900) to Elizabeth Spencer's Landscapes of the Heart. Other authors discussed include Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ellen Glasgow, Helen Keller, and Lillian Smith. The book examines narratives of martial identity, such as Mary Hamilton's Trials of the Earth, and calls attention to works by women who devoted their lives to social and political movements, like Virginia Durr's Outside the Magic Circle. The book is for those interested in Southern literature, autobiography, and the work of Southern women writers. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Contents:

Region, genre, gender

A feminist life narrative in a traditionalist society : Belle Kearney

A distanced Southern girlhood : Helen Keller and Anne Walter Fearn

Wifehood narratives : Mary Hamilton and Agnes Grinstead Anderson

Belles, wives, and public lives, part I : Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair

Belles, wives, and public lives, part II : Virginia Foster Durr, Lindy Claiborne Boggs, and Lylah Scarborough Barber

Testimonial narratives of racial consciousness : Katharine DuPre Lumpkin and Lillian Smith

Narratives of a writing life, part I : Ellen Glasgow and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Narratives of a writing life, part II : Zora Neale Hurston and Bernice Kelly Harris

Modes of autobiographical narrative : Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Spencer, and Ellen Douglas

Coda: Reflections on a literary genre.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780807137918

080713791X

OCLC:

679940468