Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Acknowledgments ix
4. Introduction: The Objects of Recovery 1
5. I. Prodigy and Teacher; or, Poetry in the Domestic-Tutelary Complex
6. Chapter One Who Killed Lucretia Davidson? 13
7. Chapter Two The School of Lydia Sigourney 32
8. II. Lessons of the Sphinx: Poetry and Cultural Capital in Abolition and Reconstruction
9. Chapter Three Poetry, Slavery, Personification: Maria Lowell’s “Africa” 67
10. Chapter Four A Difference in the Vernacular: The Reconstruction Poetry of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 94
11. III. The Conquest of Autonomy
12. Chapter Five “Plied from Nought to Nought”: Helen Hunt Jackson and the Field of Emily Dickinson’s Refusals 131
13. Chapter Six Metropolitan Pastoral: The Salon Poetry of Annie Fields 162
14. Conclusion: The Sentiments of Recovery: Adrienne Rich and Nineteenth-Century Women’s Culture 192
15. Notes 209
16. Index 267