Elizabeth Stoddard Libri

Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, née Barstow (1823-1902) was an American poet and novelist. After her marriage to poet Richard Henry Stoddard in 1852 she assisted her husband in his literary work, and contributed stories, poems and essays to the periodicals. She is most widely known today as the author of The Morgesons (1862), her first of three novels. Her other two novels are Two Men (1865) and Temple House (1867). She was also a prolific writer of short stories, children's tales, poems, essays, travel writing, and journalism pieces. One major source of Stoddard's importance to American literature is the historicism of her work, the manner in which her writing embodied and subverted the tension of her present-day culture with the archetypal or received values of the American past. Originally published between 1859 and 1890 in such magazines as Harper's Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, and The Atlantic Monthly, Stoddard's stories prove her to have had one of the most original and unique voices in nineteenth-century American literature. Amongst her other works are Poems (1895) and Lemorne Versus Huell (1863).

Elizabeth Stoddard combines the narrative style of the popular nineteenth-century male-centered bildungsroman with the conventions of women's romantic fiction in this revolutionary exploration of the conflict between a woman's instinct, passion, and will, and the social taboos, family allegiances, and traditional New England restraint that inhibit her. Set in a small seaport town (1862), The Morgesons is the dramatic story of Cassandra Morgeson's fight against social and religious norms in a quest for sexual, spiritual, and economic autonomy. An indomitable heroine, Cassandra not only achieves an equal and complete love with her husband and ownership of her family's property, but also masters the skills and accomplishments expected of women. Counterpointed with the stultified lives of her aunt, mother, and sister, Cassandra's success is a striking and radical affirmation of women's power to shape their own destinies. Embodying the convergence of the melodrama and sexual undercurrents of gothic romance and Victorian social realism, The Morgesons marks an important transition in the development of the novel and evoked comparisons during Stoddard's lifetime with such masters as Balzac, Tolstoy, Eliot, the Brontes, and Hawthorne.

Lemorne Versus Huell has been regarded as significant work throughout human history, and in order to ensure that this work is never lost, we have taken steps to ensure its preservation by republishing this book in a contemporary format for both current and future generations. This entire book has been retyped, redesigned, and reformatted. Since these books are not made from scanned copies, the text is readable and clear.

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