She left nothing in particular
Subtitle: the autobiographical legacy of nineteenth-century women's diaries
By: Amy L. Wink.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of Tennessee Press; Univ Tennessee Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Knoxville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 162
Subjects: American diaries -- Women authors -- History and criticism; American prose literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Women -- United States -- History -- 19th century -- Historiography; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Women -- United States -- Biography -- History and criticism; Autobiography -- Women authors
Description: "Virginia Woolf's story "The Legacy" describes a self-absorbed widower's all-too-typical response to the fifteen-volume diary left by his wife: he dismisses it as "nothing in particular." In contrast to that character's trivializing, contemporary feminist scholars have found diaries to be a rich resource for investigating the lives of "ordinary" women. No other documents reveal so completely what one scholar has called "life lived as a process."".

"In this book, Amy L. Wink offers a probing examination of diaries kept by nineteenth-century American women. Her sources include accounts by women who chronicled their lives on the Overland Trail, the journals of two women married sequentially to the same psychologically abusive man, and the diaries of Confederate women who used their writings to comprehend their emotional and spiritual responses to the turmoil of the Civil War.

As Wink notes, such writings demonstrate not only what these women experienced but also how they dealt with and understood that experience."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [145]-155) and index.