Engaging Italy

Etta M. Madden is Clif & Gail Smart Professor of English and Assistant Department Head at Missouri State University. As a recipient of a William J. Fulbright award, she served as a Senior Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Catania in Sicily. Her books include Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias (coedited with Martha L. Finch); Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies; and Selections from Eliza Leslie.

"Among the growing body of scholarship on the role of women in nineteenth-century transatlantic networks, Etta Madden's Engaging Italy deserves attention for its impressive, meticulous archival research in unearthing the lives and writings of three relatively unknown US women who inhabited the changing political landscape of Italy during the 1860s and 1870s … This well-documented study is a valuable addition to the understanding of the compounded cultural and political relations between the US and Italy in the nineteenth century from a refreshingly new perspective." — ALH Online Review"Madden's book allows an unprecedented, close look at a particular slice of nineteenth-century society, the American community in Rome, which may now have been forgotten but deeply influenced Italian culture and left some tangible traces … Besides its obvious archival and scholarly importance, Madden's book succeeds in spreading the diffusive light of these women, who did more than their times expected of them." — Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature"Madden is a first-rate, meticulous scholar. While many readers will not be familiar with Gould, Marsh, and Brewster, Madden's accessible, lively prose and engaging storytelling bring these women to life and make the case for their significance in the larger context of nineteenth-century transatlanticism and transnational networks." — Whitney Womack Smith, coeditor of Race and Transatlantic Identities

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsNote on the TextIntroductionPart I: Portraits of Diversity 1. Backstories of Diversity2. Vignettes of Diversity3. Summer of the Roman Question: A Window on Transnational NetworksPart II: Circuits and Networks 4. Revising Daisy Miller: The Story of "Miss Jones"5. "The Daily Ordinary": Language, Lodgings and Hostessing6. Circulating People, Circulating Texts: Associational LifePart III: Varieties of Utopian Experiences 7. Utopian Visions, Reform, and Religious Beliefs8. Emily Bliss Gould: "Works and Wants"9. Anne Hampton Brewster: A Catholic Correspondent Negotiates New Rome10. Caroline Crane Marsh: "The Power of Doing a Great Service"Coda: Residual RipplesAppendix A: "To ____ ____."Appendix B: "For Queen Anne"List of AbbreviationsNotesBibliographyIndex