Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Her Quest for Local Knowledge, 18651946 [Hardcover]

MacDougall performs a valuable service in introducing readers to (or reminding readers about) a truly pioneering American folklorist. . . .This book will be of interest to readers who want to know more about the history of American folklore studies as enacted by the life of a woman whose career spanned the period in which the field began to coalesce into the form(s) that we recognize today.Pauleena MacDougalls carefully researched biography reveals its subject as first of all a woman of fierce, imperious will. . . .MacDougalls solid research gives her study an enduring value.MacDougall's riveting narrative reveals the remarkable writer, naturalist, and folklorist Fannie Hardy Eckstorm as a woman ahead of her time. With Eckstorm's story, MacDougall stirs us to think hard and long about attitudes then and now toward modernity and tradition, locality and nation, science and humanity.This eminently readable biography has introduced me to Eckstorm in all her complexity. Whether it is exploring the Maine woods, researching the lumbermen's world and the history of ballads, or negotiating a friendship with a Penobscot woman, MacDougall provides us with the context and the personal voice that make this fascinating, complex, Renaissance woman come to life. In the process MacDougall challenges us to rethink the history of middle class women at the turn of the last century.With consummate insight and clarity, MacDougall traces the multifaceted career of writer and folklorist Fannie Hardy Eckstorm of Brewer, Maine, who stood out as a key player in a small community of women pioneers in a mans world of early-twentieth-century ethnography and folklore studies. Although constrained by the ideals of late-Victorian womanhood, Eckstorm crossed the boundaries of gender, class, and race to pursue a fascinating array of interests in Maine woodsmen and river drivers, Native American culture, New England natural history, bird and game conservation, and the expression of working-class plt