Sharon Hartman Strom is Professor Emerita of History and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

Fortune, Fame, and Desire weaves together over a dozen biographies to capture the different spheres of opportunity for nineteenth-century individuals to fashion themselves and the questions through which these figures engaged the public....The storytelling is crisp, engaging, and richly contextualized. The lives examined here span the century, with major emphasis on the decades surrounding the Civil War.

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 “I Have an Ambition that Burns Like Fire”: Ephraim George Squier, Race, and the North American Travelogue2 “The Right of Defining One’s Position Seems to Be a Very Sacred Privilege in America:” Lola Montez, Miriam Follin, E.G. Squier, and DeWitt Clinton Hitchcock3 “Yours in the Name of Freedom”: Frances Watkins Harper, Harriet Wilson, and the Legacy of William Watkins4 “One’s Own Branch of the Human Race”: Frances Watkins Harper, Anna Dickinson, and Frederick Douglass5 “Self Reliance,” “Universal Redemption,” and “The Obsessed Woman”: Warren Chase, Joseph Osgood Barrett, and Juliet Stillman Severence6 Race, the Woman Question and “Liberty in Thought and Expression”: Harriet Wilson, Paschal Beverly Randolph, and Laura Briggs James7 Coda ‘The Present Age”IndexAbout the Author

Sharon Hartman Strom is Professor Emerita of History and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

Fortune, Fame, and Desire weaves together over a dozen biographies to capture the different spheres of opportunity for nineteenth-century individuals to fashion themselves and the questions through which these figures engaged the public....The storytelling is crisp, engaging, and richly contextualized. The lives examined here span the century, with major emphasis on the decades surrounding the Civil War.

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 “I Have an Ambition that Burns Like Fire”: Ephraim George Squier, Race, and the North American Travelogue2 “The Right of Defining One’s Position Seems to Be a Very Sacred Privilege in America:” Lola Montez, Miriam Follin, E.G. Squier, and DeWitt Clinton Hitchcock3 “Yours in the Name of Freedom”: Frances Watkins Harper, Harriet Wilson, and the Legacy of William Watkins4 “One’s Own Branch of the Human Race”: Frances Watkins Harper, Anna Dickinson, and Frederick Douglass5 “Self Reliance,” “Universal Redemption,” and “The Obsessed Woman”: Warren Chase, Joseph Osgood Barrett, and Juliet Stillman Severence6 Race, the Woman Question and “Liberty in Thought and Expression”: Harriet Wilson, Paschal Beverly Randolph, and Laura Briggs James7 Coda ‘The Present Age”IndexAbout the Author

Sharon Hartman Strom is Professor Emerita of History and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

Fortune, Fame, and Desire weaves together over a dozen biographies to capture the different spheres of opportunity for nineteenth-century individuals to fashion themselves and the questions through which these figures engaged the public....The storytelling is crisp, engaging, and richly contextualized. The lives examined here span the century, with major emphasis on the decades surrounding the Civil War.

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 “I Have an Ambition that Burns Like Fire”: Ephraim George Squier, Race, and the North American Travelogue2 “The Right of Defining One’s Position Seems to Be a Very Sacred Privilege in America:” Lola Montez, Miriam Follin, E.G. Squier, and DeWitt Clinton Hitchcock3 “Yours in the Name of Freedom”: Frances Watkins Harper, Harriet Wilson, and the Legacy of William Watkins4 “One’s Own Branch of the Human Race”: Frances Watkins Harper, Anna Dickinson, and Frederick Douglass5 “Self Reliance,” “Universal Redemption,” and “The Obsessed Woman”: Warren Chase, Joseph Osgood Barrett, and Juliet Stillman Severence6 Race, the Woman Question and “Liberty in Thought and Expression”: Harriet Wilson, Paschal Beverly Randolph, and Laura Briggs James7 Coda ‘The Present Age”IndexAbout the Author