Zona Gale

Part of an ongoing series covering the texts and lives of the most important women writers of English, this book contains introductory essays by Harold Bloom and provides biographical information, a wide selection of critical excerpts, and complete bibliographies of 11 authors.

Women writers have been traditionally excluded from literary canons, not until recently have scholars begun to rediscover or discover neglected women writers and their works. This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 American women authors who wrote between 1900 and 1945, a period that embraces two major artistic movements, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a review of the author's critical reception, and extensive primary and secondary bibliographies. The volume reflects the diversity of American culture through its coverage of African American, Native American, Mexican American, and Chinese American women writers.

In Writers of Conviction, Julia C. Ehrhardt examines the literary careers of four American writers who have not received the critical attention they deserve: Zona Gale, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Rose Wilder Lane, and Josephine Herbst. For too long, "middlebrow" female authors have been ignored by scholars--mainly because their stories were considered to lack serious political content or social commentary--despite their popularity with the general public. Writers of Conviction reintroduces these authors to reveal a fascinating and unexplored aspect of white, middle-class female authorship: the provocative links between each writer's personal politics and her literary aspirations. Ehrhardt uses this innovative critical perspective to show that each woman became a writer in order to express her political beliefs to the largest possible audience. Combining feminist literary theory, women's history, and biographical criticism, each chapter presents a compelling study of a woman's individual journey to political consciousness and the writings that resulted from it. Rather than discussing familiar issues--such as woman suffrage and equal rights--that usually dominate our understanding of women's political activity in the early twentieth century as they surfaced in writing by canonical woman authors, Ehrhardt introduces readers to four lesser-known women and the political agendas they endorsed in both published and unpublished writings. In-depth analyses are presented on Gale's support of the municipal-housekeeping movement, Fisher's anxieties about the rise of New England tourism, Lane's criticism of the New Deal, and Herbst's denunciation of the risks involved in illegal abortion. Ehrhardtoffers a refreshing new perspective on Herbst's fiction by putting sexuality rather than class at the center of the analysis. Writers of Conviction breaks new ground by also assessing the current critical conception of legitima