Fall River An Authentic Narrative [Paperback]

Catharine Williams (1787-1872) lived most of her life in Rhode Island, where she supported herself and her daughter by a productive literary career. Her most compelling work,Fall River, last published in 1833, recreates a notorious incident in the ill-fated town of Fall River, Massachusetts: the trial of a Methodist minister for the murder of a pregnant mill worker whom it was suspected he had seduced. Williams's investigative report offers a vivid contemporary view of the lives of poor factory girls and of clerical corruption in the industrial towns of early New England. While based in fact, the book raises themes of sexual and religious hypocrisy and exploitation that may be compared with those of novels likeThe Coquette,Uncle Tom's Cabin, andThe Scarlet Letter. At the same time, the author's mixture of journalism, biography, fiction, and exhortation makes this authentic narrative an unusual challenge to traditional notions of literary form and yields fresh insights into the nature of early American women's writing.

The story of Hester Prynne, had she worked in a factory. It pivotally locates women's sexuality amid industrialization, familial dispersion, religious fervor, and the American juridical system. --Russ Castronovo,University of Miami

Praise for the series: Publishing these previously unknown or ignored volumes by women will revolutionize the canon of English and American literature taught in graduate and undergraduate courses. The list of texts is impressive. It includes some of the most important scholarship now under way in the field of Renaissance literature. --Margaret Hannay,Siena College

Making these writers available in an easily accessible form contributes significantly not only to feminist scholarship, which has been seeking to recover the works of such writers for two decades, but also to teaching and scholarship more generally within the humanitiesló-