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FOREWORD

In a memorandum to contributors, Lina Mainiero, the founding editor of American Women Writers described the project she envisioned in 1978:

Written wholly by women critics, this reference work is designed as a four-volume survey of American women writers from colonial days to the present… Most entries will be on women who have written what is traditionally defined as literature. But AWW will also include entries on writers in other fields… I see AWW as a precious opportunity for women—those who write it and those who read it—to integrate at a more self-conscious level a variety of reading experience.

The result was a document of its time, a period when feminism was associated with building sisterhood and raising consciousness. Even a commercial publishing venture might take on the trappings of a consciousness raising session in which readers and writers met. The idea now seems naive, but the ideal is worth remembering. In 1978 Mainiero was neither young nor revolutionary. She was hesitant about pushing too far; she was content to let traditional definitions stand. But the very inclusion of Rachel Carson and Margaret Mead, Betty Smith and Ursula LeGuin, Rebecca Harding Davis and Phillis Wheatley, Gertrude Stein and Dorothy Parker in a reference work entitled simply and profoundly American Women Writers spoke eloquently. Without ever referring explicitly to "canon revision," these four volumes contributed to the process. Having the books on the shelves testified to the existence of hundreds of women who had written across the centuries. Including those whose work was perceived to be "literary" alongside those whose work was not, prefigured debates that continue today both inside and outside of the academy.

Mainiero was especially concerned that contributors not aim their entries at the academic specialist. The "putative reader" was a college senior, who was conversant with literary history and criticism, feminism, and the humanities. This emphasis provoked criticism, because it was expressed during the heyday of academic feminism. American Women Writers appeared the same year as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar published The Madwoman in the Attic, their influential study of 19th-century English women writers. Nina Baym's American Women Writers and Women's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and About Women in America had appeared the year before. In retrospect, however, the reader Mainiero targeted is precisely the young woman she hoped would join the consciousness session organized by her elders, a woman who would not become an academic, but who would find in women's writing the "necessary bread" to sustain her in living her life.

Ideals and realities clashed in a project that was clearly intended to make money, but declined to pay honoraria to individual contributors. Instead, the publisher promised to contribute a percentage of any profits to "women's causes." The desire to reach the common reader was one reason the volumes were published without a scholarly overview. The decision not to address an academic audience meant the entries contained no critical jargon, but it also meant no authorities checked facts. In fairness, few facts were known about many of the women in the book. Numerous articles profiled women about whom no one had written. One way to gauge the success of feminist scholarship over the past two decades would be to compare the bibliographies of women in this edition with those in the original edition. What we know now about women's writing in the United States is more than we realized there was to know two decades ago. Let me use my contributions as examples. I wrote entries on Gwendolyn Brooks, Frances Watkins Harper, Nella Larsen, and Anne Spencer. These black women lived and worked across almost two centuries. Harper, an abolitionist and women's rights advocate, had been the most popular African American poet of the mid-19th century. Larsen and Spencer published fiction and poetry, respectively, during the Harlem Renaissance. Of Brooks, I concluded, "by any reckoning, hers is one of the major voices of 20th-century American poetry." Yet no biographies existed for any of them. All of the information in print on Harper referred to a single source.

Twenty years later, scholars have explored Harper's life in depth; digging through the archives, Frances Smith Foster discovered three lost novels and a treasure trove of poems. In search of the women of the Harlem Renaissance, scholars have unearthed much more information concerning Larsen and Spencer. Now the subject of a biography by Thadious Davis, Larsen and her novels—Passing in particular—have become key texts in the formulation of feminist theory and queer theory. Ironically, though Spencer's oeuvre was the most slender, she was the only one of these writers to have been the subject of a book: J. Lee Greene's Time's Unfading Garden, a biographical and critical treatment of the poet along with a selection of her poems. Brooks has begun to receive her due in five biographical and critical studies. As scholars have continued their work, readers have found a valuable reference tool in American Women Writers. The fourth and final volume of the original edition appeared in 1982. Soon afterward, Langdon Lynne Faust edited an abridged version, including a two-volume edition in paperback. In part because the original edition concentrated on writers before 1960, a supplement, edited by Carol Hurd Green and Mary G. Mason, was published in 1993. The writers included were more diverse than ever, as a more inclusive understanding of "American" grew.

Fostering that understanding has been a priority of this project since the beginning. That new editions continue to be published confirms the existence of a need that these volumes fill. The explosion of feminist scholarship has enriched each subsequent edition of American Women Writers. In this venue at least, the gap between academic specialist and common reader has narrowed. One development that no one would have predicted is the re-emergence of the literary society, a common feature in 19th-century American life. The name has changed; it is now more often called the reading group. But the membership remains mostly female. Such groups have grown up in every segment of American society. Indeed, "Oprah's Book Club" is a macrocosm of a widespread local phenomenon. I hope and suspect members of reading groups, as well as the undergraduates who remain its putative readers, will find this new edition of American Women Writers a resource that can be put to everyday use.