Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge / original text by Frances Harriet Whipple, with Elleanor Eldridge ; edited by Joycelyn K. Moody.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Green, Frances H. (Frances Harriet), 1805-1878, author.

Eldridge, Elleanor, 1784-1845?, author.

Contributor:

Moody, Joycelyn K., 1957- editor.

Series:

Regenerations ; v. 3.

Regenerations: African American literature and culture ; volume three

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Eldridge, Elleanor, 1784-1845?.

Eldridge, Elleanor.

African American women--Rhode Island--Providence--Biography.

African American women.

African Americans--Rhode Island--Providence--Biography.

African Americans.

Free Black people--Rhode Island--Providence--Biography.

Free Black people.

African Americans--Rhode Island--Providence--Social conditions--19th century.

Social conditions.

Providence (R.I.)--Race relations.

Providence (R.I.).

Providence (R.I.)--Biography.

Rhode Island--Providence.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 171 pages ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Morgantown [West Virginia] : West Virginia University Press, 2014.

Summary:

Elleanor Eldridge, born of African and US indigenous descent in 1794, operated a lucrative domestic services business in nineteenth century Providence, Rhode Island. In defiance of her gender and racial background, she purchased land and built rental property from the wealth she gained as a business owner. In the 1830s, Eldridge was defrauded of her property by a white lender. In a series of common court cases, she managed to recover it through the Rhode Island judicial system. In order to raise funds to carry out this. In order to raise funds to carry out this litigation, her memoir, was published in 1838. Frances Harriet Whipple, an aspiring white writer in Rhode Island, narrated and co-authored Eldridge's story, expressing a proto-feminist outrage at the male "extortioners" who caused Eldridge's loss and distress. Not only were Eldrige's material achievement unusual, but her memoirs form an exceptional antebellum biography, from her birth through the first edition, printed almost yearly between 1838 and 1847. Memoirs constitutes a counter-narrative to slave narratives of early nineteenth-century New England, changing the literary landscape of conventional American Renaissance studies and interpretations of American Transcendentalism. With an introduction by Joycelyn K. Moody, this new edition contextualizes the extraordinary life of Elleanor Eldridge. Because of her mixed-race identity, relative wealth, local and regional renown, and her efficacy in establishing a collective of white women patrons, this biography challenges typical African and indigenous women's literary production of the early national period and resituates Elleanor Eldridge as an important cultural and historical figure of the nineteenth century. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction 1

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge and Nineteenth-Century Interracial Coauthorship 7

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge, Sentimental ism, and (Black) Print Culture as (White) Women's Political Activism 23

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge and Productions of Maria W. Stewart 30

A Fire Woman of Property 34

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge and the Rhode Island Court of Common Pleas 46

Conclusion: Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge as African American Literature 54

A Final Note on Recovering Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge 81

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge 91

Preface 93

Chapter I. 95

Chapter II. 99

Chapter III. 107

Chapter IV. 111

Chapter V. 116

Chapter VI. 121

Chapter VII. 125

Chapter VIII. 130

Chapter IX. 133

Chapter X. 137

Chapter XII. 140

Chapter XIII. 146.

Notes:

Originally published: 1838.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9781935978244

1935978241

9781935978237

1935978233

OCLC:

849510002