Constance Fenimore Woolson, Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

In an essay published in

Harper’s Weekly

(1887), and later included in

Partial Portraits

(1888), Henry James described Constance Fenimore Woolson’s collection

Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches

(1880) as “the fruit of a remarkable minuteness of observation and tenderness of feeling on the part of one who evidently did not glance and pass, but lingered and analysed”. Particularly praiseworthy, in James’s view, was the sensitivity with which Woolson had responded to the “

voicelessness

of the conquered and reconstructed South”, and her “compassionate sense of this pathetic dumbness”. Indeed Woolson, a northener who had come to know the South intimately as a result of her sojourn there from 1873 to 1879, had found in that region abundant material for her fiction and…

1068 words

Citation: Buonomo, Leonardo. "Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2337, accessed 19 March 2024.]

2337 Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.