{"product_id":"9781621900511","title":"\"Hero Strong\" and Other Stories: Tales of Girlhood Ambition, Female Masculinity, and Women's Worldly Achievement in Antebellum America","description":"\u003cp\u003eA teenage orphan from Vermont, Mary Gibson burst onto the literary scene during the\u003cbr\u003eearly 1850s as a star writer, under the pseudonym Winnie Woodfern, for more than half a\u003cbr\u003edozen Boston “story papers,” mass-circulation weekly periodicals that specialized in popular\u003cbr\u003efiction. Although she would soon join such famous woman authors as Fanny Fern\u003cbr\u003eand E. D. E. N. Southworth as featured contributors to the \u003ci\u003eNew York Ledger\u003c\/i\u003e, America’s\u003cbr\u003egreatest story paper, Gibson’s subsequent output rarely matched the gender-bending creativity\u003cbr\u003eof the tales written in her late teens and early twenties and reprinted in this volume.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut \u003ci\u003e“Hero Strong” and Other Stories\u003c\/i\u003e does much more than recover the work of a\u003cbr\u003eforgotten literary prodigy. As explained by historian Daniel A. Cohen, Gibson’s tales\u003cbr\u003ealso illuminate major interrelated transformations in American girlhood and American\u003cbr\u003ewomen’s authorship. Challenging traditional gender expectations, thousands of girls of\u003cbr\u003eGibson’s generation not only aspired to public careers as writers, artists, educators, and\u003cbr\u003eeven doctors but also began to experiment with new forms of “female masculinity” in\u003cbr\u003eattitude, bearing, behavior, dress, and sexuality—a pattern only gradually domesticated\u003cbr\u003eby the nonthreatening image of the “tomboy.” Some, such as Gibson, at once realized and\u003cbr\u003ereenacted their dreams on the pages of antebellum story papers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis first modern scholarly edition of Mary Gibson’s early fiction features ten tales of\u003cbr\u003eteenage girls (seemingly much like Gibson herself) who fearlessly appropriate masculine\u003cbr\u003etraits, defy contemporary gender norms, and struggle to fulfill high worldly ambitions.\u003cbr\u003eIn addition to several heroines who seek “fame and riches” as authors or artists,\u003cbr\u003eGibson’s unconventional protagonists include three female medical students who resort to\u003cbr\u003egrave robbing and a Boston ingénue who dreams of achieving military glory in battle. By\u003cbr\u003emoving beyond “literary domesticity” and embracing bold new models of women’s\u003cbr\u003eauthorship, artistry, and worldly achievement, Gibson and her fictional protagonists stand\u003cbr\u003eas exemplars of “the first generation of American girls who imagined they could do almost\u003cbr\u003eanything.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDaniel A. Cohen is an associate professor of history at Case Western Reserve University.\u003cbr\u003eHis previous publications include \u003ci\u003ePillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime\u003cbr\u003eLiterature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003e‘The Female Marine’\u003cbr\u003eand Related Works: Narratives of Cross-Dressing and Urban Vice in America’s Early\u003cbr\u003eRepublic.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Tennessee Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47042269741296,"sku":"9781621900511","price":69.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781621900511_p0.jpg?v=1763863684","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781621900511","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}