A Colonial Woman's Bookshelf

A Colonial Woman's Bookshelf represents a significant contribution to the study of the intellectual life of women in British North America. Kevin J. Hayes studies the books these women read and the reasons why they read them. As Hayes notes, recent studies on the literary tastes of early American women have concentrated on the post-revolutionary period, when several women novelists emerged. Yet, he observes, women were reading long before they began writing and publishing novels, and, in fa...