Nineteenth-century women learn to write / edited with an introduction by Catherine Hobbs.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-332) and index.

Introduction : cultures and practices of U.S. women's literacy / Catherine Hobbs -- Conduct books for women, 1830-1860 : a rationale for women's conduct and domestic role in America / Jane E. Rose -- "In an atmosphere of peril" : college women and their writing / Vickie Ricks -- "The voice, pen and influence of our women are abroad in the land" : women and the Illinois State Normal University, 1857-1899 / Sandra D. Harmon -- "Let us strive earnestly to value education aright" : Cherokee female seminarians as leaders of a changing culture / Devon A. Mihesuah -- His religion and hers in nineteenth-century hymnody / June Hadden Hobbs -- Writing in circles : Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Semi-Colon Club, and the construction of women's authorship / Nicole Tonkovich -- Literacy as a tool for social action among nineteenth-century African American women / Shirley Wilson Logan -- Mothers, daughters, diaries : literacy, relationship, and cultural context / Judy Nolte Temple and Suzanne L. Bunkers -- Women and the western military frontier : Elizabeth Bacon Custer / Maryan Wherry -- Cultural models of womanhood and female education : practices of colonization and resistance / P. Joy Rouse -- Silks, Congress gaiters, and rhetoric : a Butler University graduate of 1860 tells her story / Heidemarie Z. Weidner -- Radcliffe responses to Harvard rhetoric : "an absurdly stiff way of thinking" / Sue Carter Simmons -- "A toast to Jerusha Jane Jones" / [Mary Ashmun] -- "Is John smarter than I?" by Jerusha Jane Jones (Rockford Seminary magazine, 1875) / [Julia Lathrop?] -- Afterword : revealing the ties that bind? / JoAnn Campbell.