"Kins[wo]men of the shelf" : Emily Dickinson's reading of women writers

This study places Emily Dickinson in the midst of a nineteenth-century feminine literary tradition by examining her reading of other women writers. Throughout her life she passionately read women who influenced her life and art in both positive and negative ways. Chapters discuss Dickinson's reading, Dickinson's search for role models in biography and fiction, Dickinson's reading of domestic literature, Dickinson's reading of George Sand and other women she influenced, and Dickinson's reading of literature that preaches a social gospel. Writers discussed include Jane Austen, Mathilde Blind, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lydia Maria Child, Dinah Mulock Craik, Rebecca Harding Davis, George Eliot, Fanny Fern, Margaret Fuller, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Elizabeth Gaskell, Julia Ward Howe, Helen Hunt Jackson, Mathilde Ann Mackamess, Anne Manning, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Adelaide Anne Procter, Mary Robinson, George Sand, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mary Wollstonecraft.