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Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South. By Catherine Kerrison. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 265. $45.00, ISBN 0-8014-4344-X.)
Catherine Kerrison examines the intellectual lives of southern white women within the context of the Anglo-American world, revealing how their literacy was a cornerstone of white male authority and power in the southern colonies. In doing so, she adds a new dimension to our understanding of the intellectual development of the South.
To trace southern women's intellectual development, Kerrison had to "think in new ways and look in new places-to prescriptive literature rather than to the classics; to women's letters and diaries rather than to published tracts and weighty learned texts; to women's homes as impromptu classrooms rather than to the College of William and Mary or Grey's Inn, London . . .; to their kin and friends rather than to schoolmates" (p. 185). In constructing these women's history, Kerrison explores the texts read by women of this era in England and throughout the American colonies-sermons, devotional tracts, conduct literature, and later, novels-and assesses...