Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-318) and index.

"Managing Literacy, Mothering America accomplishes two tasks. It identifies and defines a previously unstudied genre, the domestic literacy narrative, and provides a pioneering cultural history of this genre from the early days of the United States through the turn of the twentieth century." "At the center of the genre's history are authors such as Lydia Sigourney, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Frances Harper, who viewed their writing as a form of teaching for the public good. But in her wide-ranging and interdisciplinary investigation, Robbins demonstrates that a long line of women writers created domestic literacy narratives, which proved to be highly responsive to shifts in educational agendas and political issues throughout the nineteenth century and beyond." "Robbins offers close readings of texts ranging from the 1790s to the 1920s. These include influential British precursors to the genre and early twentieth-century narratives by women missionaries that have been previously undervalued by cultural historians. She examines texts by prominent authors that have received little critical attention to date - such as Lydia Maria Child's Good Wives - and provides fresh context when discussing such well-known works of the period as Uncle Tom's Cabin."--Jacket.

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