Publisher's Synopsis
"Well-researched, insightful essays. . . . An important book on literary mentoring in American belles lettres."--Elizabeth Hayes, LeMoyne College
Presenting a rich and suggestive picture of the complex relationships between aspiring writers and their mentors from the 1870s to the late 20th century, these essays cover an extraordinarily productive era in American letters. In the context of significant changes in the nature of authorship and publishing during the period, they show the importance of guidance in establishing a successful literary career. This book offers a new, wider definition of mentoring and suggests fruitful ways for critics and readers to explore the careers and works of writers, especially women writers, from the realist and modernist periods.
[Clean, not edited, not numbered, version]
Contents
Introduction, by Irene C. Goldman-Price and Melissa McFarland Pennell
1. "The Last Letter of All": Reese, Stedman, and Poetry in Late-Nineteenth-Century America, by Robert J. Scholnick
2. The Mentor's Charge: Literary Mentoring in Howells's Criticism and Fiction, by Melissa McFarland Pennell
3. "In this particular instance I want you": The Booster as Mentor in A Hazard of New Fortunes, by Irene C. Goldman-Price
4. Henry James's Ghostly Mentors, by Cheryl B. Torsney
5. Negative Mentorship and the Case of Alice James, by Esther F. Lanigan
6. Female Models and Male Mentors in Wharton's Early Fiction, by Julie Olin-Ammentorp
7. Edith Wharton and Partnership: The House of Mirth, The Decoration of Houses, and "Copy," by Carol J. Singley
8. Meetings of Minds: Edith Wharton as Mentor and Guide, by Helen Killoran
9. "Someone Young and Teachable": Dimensions of Mentoring in the Fiction of Willa Cather, by Deborah Carlin
10. "Efforts of Affection": Mentorship and Friendship in Moore and Bishop, by Margaret Wooster Freeman
11. Eudora Welty: The Silent Mentors, by Jean Frantz Blackall
Irene C. Goldman-Price is a lecturer in English and women's studies at Pennsylvania State University, Hazelton. She is the author of several book chapters and of articles in the Journal of Popular Literature and Modern Language Studies.
Melissa McFarland Pennell, professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, is the author of The Student Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne and of essays on 19th-century American literature.
