Nature's Aristocracy: A Plea for the Oppressed

In 1871 Jennie Collins became one of the first working-class American women to publish a volume of her own writings: Nature's Aristocracy. Merging autobiography, social criticism, fictionalized vignettes, and feminist polemics, her book examines the perennial problem of class in America. Collins loosely structures her series of sketches around the argument that nineteenth-century U.S. society, by deviating dangerously from the ideals set forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, had...