Winner of the 2018 Early American Literature Book Prize
In this compelling and original book, Caroline Wigginton reshapes our understanding of early American literary history. Overturning long-standing connections between the male-dominated print culture of pamphlets, broadsides, and newspapers and the transformative ideas that instigated the American Revolution, Wigginton explores how women’s "relational publications"--circulated texts, objects, and performances--transformed their public and intimate worlds. She argues that Native, black, and white women’s interpersonal "publications" revolutionized the dynamics of power and connection in public and private spaces, whether those spaces were Quaker meeting houses, Creek talwas, trading posts, burial grounds, or the women’s own "neighborhoods."