The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century provides scholars, instructors, and students with the most influential essays that have defined the field of American girls' history and culture. A relatively new and energetic field of inquiry, girl-centered research is critical for a fuller understanding of women and gender, a deeper consideration of childhood and adolescence, and a greater acknowledgment of the significance of generation as a historical force in American culture and society. Bringing together work from top scholars of women and youth, The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century addresses topics ranging from diary writing and toys to prostitution and slavery. Covering girlhood and the relationships between girls and women, this pioneering volume tackles pivotal themes such as education, work, play, sexuality, consumption, and the body. The reader also illuminates broader nineteenth-century developments—including urbanization, industrialization, and immigration--through the often-overlooked vantage point of girls. As these essays collectively suggest, nineteenth-century girls wielded relatively little political or social power but carved out other spaces of self-expression. Contributors are Carol Devens, Miriam Forman-Brunell, Jane H. Hunter, Anya Jabour, Anne Scott MacLeod, Susan McCully, Mary Niall Mitchell, Leslie Paris, Barbara Sicherman, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Christine Stansell, Nancy M. Theriot, and Deborah Gray White.

Table of Contents:
Credits   ix Introduction   1 1. The Life Cycle of the Female Slave   15 Deborah Gray White 2. "Grown Girls, Highly Cultivated": Female Education in an Antebellum Southern Family   31 Anya Jabour 3. "Oh I Love Mother, I Love Her Power": Shaker Spirit Possession and the Performance of Desire"   69 Susan McCully 4. Women on the Town: Sexual Exchange and Prostitution   80 Christine Stansell 5. "If We Get the Girls, We Get the Race": Missionary Education of Native American Girls   104 Carol Devens 6. "Rosebloom and Pure White," Or So It Seemed   120 Mary Niall Mitchell 7. The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America   149 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg 8. Psychosomatic Illness in History: The "Green Sickness" among Nineteenth-Century Adolescent Girls   179 Nancy M. Theriot 9. The Caddie Woodlawn Syndrome: American Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century   199 Anne Scott MacLeod 10. The Politics of Dollhood in Nineteenth-Century America   222 Miriam Forman-Brunell 11. Inscribing the Self in the Heart of the Family: Diaries and Girlhood in Late-Victorian America   242 Jane H. Hunter 12. Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text   270 Barbara Sicherman Contributors   301 Index   305