City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860

City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860

History

Stansell, Christine

Americas

University of Illinois Press

Examines the changing relationship between men and women in New York City prior to the Civil War and discusses women's work as factory workers, domestic servant's, and prostitutes

City of Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789-1860

KNOPF

In this sweeping, definitive volume, Christine Stansell, one of the leading historians of her generation, tells the story of one of the great democratic movements of our times. For more than two centuries, the ranks of feminists have included dreamy idealists and conscientious reformers, erotic rebels and angry housewives, dazzling writers,shrewd political strategists, and thwarted workingwomen. Well-known leaders are sketched from new angles by Stansell, with her bracingeye for character: Mary Wollstonecraft, the passionate English writer who in 1792 published the first full-scale argument for the rights of women; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, brilliant and fearless; the imperious, quarrelsome Betty Friedan. But figures from other contexts, too, appear in an unforgettable new light, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in the 1970s led a revolution in the constitutional interpretations of women’s rights, and Toni Morrison, whose bittersweet prose gave voice to the modern black female experience. Stansell accounts for the failures of feminism as well as the successes. She notes significant moments in the struggle for gender equality, such as the emergence in the early 1900s of the dashing“New Woman”; the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote; the post–World War II collapseof suburban neo-Victorianism; and the radical feminism of the 1960s—all of which led to vast changesin Americanculture and society. The Feminist Promise dramatically updates our understanding of feminism, taking the story through the age of Reagan and into the era of international feminist movements that have swept the globe. Stansell provocatively insists that the fight for women’s rights in developing countries “cannot be separated from democracy’s survival.” A soaring work unprecedented in scope, historical depth, and literary appeal, The Feminist Promise is bound to become an authoritative source on this essential subject for decades to come on. At once a work of scholarship, political observation, and personal reflection, it is a book that speaks to the demands and challenges—individual, national, and international—of the twenty-first century.

The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present (Modern Library Chronicles)

Modern Library

In the early twentieth century, an exuberant brand of gifted men and women moved to New York City, not to get rich but to participate in a cultural revolution. For them, the city's immigrant neighborhoods--home to art, poetry, cafes, and cabarets in the European tradition--provided a place where the fancies and forms of a new America could be tested. Some called themselves Bohemians, some members of the avant-garde, but all took pleasure in the exotic, new, and forbidden.
 In American Moderns, Christine Stansell tells the story of the most famous of these neighborhoods, Greenwich Village, which--thanks to cultural icons such as Eugene O'Neill, Isadora Duncan, and Emma Goldman--became a symbol of social and intellectual freedom. Stansell eloquently explains how the mixing of old and new worlds, politics and art, and radicalism and commerce so characteristic of New York shaped the modern American urban scene. American Moderns is both an examination and a celebration of a way of life that's been nearly forgotten.

American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century

Princeton University Press

A brilliant account of the American bohemians whose experiments in living, writing, and loving created the modern world and made New York its capital. In the early years of the twentieth century, an exuberant band of talented individualists living in a shabby neighborhood called Greenwich Village set out to change the world. Committed to free speech, free love, and politically engaged art, they swept away sexual prudery, stodgy bourgeois art, and political conservatism as they clamorously declared the birth of the new. Christine Stansell offers the first comprehensive history of this legary period. She takes us deep into the downtown bohemia, which brought together creative dissenters from all walks of life: hobos and Harvard men, society matrons and immigrant Jews, wobblies and New Women, poets and anarchists. And she depicts their lyrical hopes for the century they felt they were sponsoring-a radiant vision of modernity, both egalitarian and artful, that flourished briefly, poignantly, until America entered the First World War and patriotism trumped self-expression.

Metropolitan Books

A brilliant account of the legary American bohemians, hailed as "the best book ever written about this era, these people, and the ways they shook up our national culture for good" (Michael Kazin) In the early years of the twentieth century, an exuberant band of talented individualists living in a shabby neighborhood called Greenwich Village set out to change the world. Committed to free speech, free love, and politically engaged art, they swept away sexual prudery, stodgy bourgeois art, and political conservatism as they clamorously declared the birth of the new. Christine Stansell offers the first comprehensive history of this legary period. She takes us deep into the downtown bohemia, which brought together creative dissenters from all walks of life: hoboes and Harvard men, society matrons and immigrant Jews, Wobblies and New Women, poets and anarchists. And she depicts their lyrical hopes for the century they felt they were sponsoring -- a radiant vision of modernity, both egalitarian and artful, that flourished briefly, poignantly, until America entered the First World War and patriotism trumped self-expression.

Holt Paperbacks

In this definitive volume, respected historian Christine Stansell tells the story of one of the great democratic movements of our times. She paints richly detailed portraits of well-known leaders—Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan—but others, too, appear in a new light, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Toni Morrison. Accounting for the failures of feminism as well as the successes, Stansell notes the emergence in the early 1900s of the dashing“New Woman”; the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote; the post–World War II collapseof suburban neo-Victorianism; the radical feminism of the 1960s; and the fight for women’s rights in developing countries in the era of international feminist movements. A soaring work, The Feminist Promise is bound to become an authoritative source on this essential subject for decades to come.

The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present (Modern Library Paperbacks)

World

Random House Publishing Group

This provocative anthology brings together a diverse group of well-known feminist and gay writers, historians, and activists. They are concerned not only with current sexual issues-abortion, pornography, reproductive and gay rights-but they also raise a host of new issues and questions: How, and in what ways, is sexuality political? Is the struggle for sexual freedom a complement to other struggles for liberation, or will it detract from them? Has the sexual revolution diminished or enriched the lives of women?

Powers of Desire (New Feminist Library)

Literature & Fiction

Snitow, Ann

Sharon Thompson

History & Criticism

Monthly Review+press

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Books by Stansell, Christine

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City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860

City of Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789-1860

The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present (Modern Library Chronicles)

American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century

American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century

American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century

The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Powers of Desire (New Feminist Library)