Maverick autobiographies
Subtitle: women writers and the American West, 1900-1936
By: Cathryn Halverson.
Series: Wisconsin studies in autobiography
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Madison
Language: eng
Number of pages: 230
Subjects: American prose literature -- West (U.S.) -- History and criticism.; Women and literature -- West (U.S.) -- History -- 20th century.; American prose literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; American prose literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Women authors, American -- Biography -- History and criticism.; Women authors, American -- Homes and haunts -- West (U.S.); Authors, American -- Biography -- History and criticism.; Authors, American -- Homes and haunts -- West (U.S.); Women -- West (U.S.) -- Intellectual life.; Autobiography -- Women authors.; West (U.S.) -- Biography -- History and criticism.; West (U.S.) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.
Description: "In contrast to the traditional frontiers and pioneers focus of western studies, Maverick Autobiographies looks at women writers who came not to but from the West. Telling three larger-than-life stories, Cathryn Halverson offers an alternative history of American women's autobiography and a new view of western women's literature. Mary MacLane, Opal Whiteley, and Juanita Harrison, she argues, rewrote frontier myths to make a space for themselves as female iconoclasts from the West. Creating an ardent readership for western women's "naked" desires, they became best-selling celebrity authors. After their intense early fame, though, they virtually disappeared. Halverson examines why, and brings their texts back to light through a weaving of biography, literary analysis, and cultural history - in the process, urging us to reformulate our notions of what it means to be a "western writer." Halverson's discoveries will appeal to scholars and critics of Western American literature and women's studies."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-221) and index.