Helen Hunt Jackson – författare

“If I could write a story that would do for the Indian a thousandth part of what Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for the Negro,” wrote Helen Hunt Jackson, “I would be thankful the rest of my life.” Jackson surpassed this ambition with the publication of Ramona, her popular 1884 romantic bestseller. A beautiful half Native American, half-Scottish orphan raised by a harsh Mexican ranchera, Ramona enters into a forbidden love affair with a heroic Mission Indian named Alessandro. The pair’s adventures after they elope paint a vivid portrait of California history and the woeful fate of Native Americans and Mexicans whose lands and rights were stripped as Anglo-Americans overran southern California. Set from the first American edition of 1884, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes José Martí’s 1888 prologue (translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen).

Journalist, novelist, and scholar Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-85) remains one of the most influential and popular writers on the struggles of American Indians. This volume collects for the first time seven of her most important articles, annotated and introduced by Jackson scholars Valerie Sherer Mathes and Phil Brigandi. Valuable as eyewitness accounts of Mission Indian life in Southern California in the 1880s, the articles also offer insight into Jackson's career.The articles served as the basis for Jackson's 1884 romantic novel, Ramona, still popular among Americans today. Jackson journeyed to Southern California in the 1880s to learn firsthand how Indians there lived. She found them in a demoralized state, beset by failed government policies and constantly threatened with losing their lands. The numerous articles and editorial responses she penned made her a leading voice in the fight for American Indian rights, a role she embraced wholeheartedly.As this collection also shows, Jackson's fondness for Old California helped shape the region's mythology and tourist culture. But her most important work was her influence in getting reservations set aside for the beleaguered Southern California tribes. Although her recommendations were not implemented until after her death, Helen Hunt Jackson's stark and revealing portrait drew national attention to the effects of white encroachment on Indian lands and cultures in California and inspired generations of reformers who continued her legacy. This unprecedented collection offers fresh insight into the life and work of a well-known and influential writer and reformer.

Helen Hunt Jackson's passionate crusade for Indian rights comes to life in this collection of more than 200 letters, most of which have never been published before. With Valerie Sherer Mathes's helpful notes, the letters reveal the behind-the-scenes drama of Jackson's involvement in Indian reform, which led her to write A Century of Dishonor and her protest novel, Ramona.Ralph Waldo Emerson described Jackson as the ""greatest American woman poet."" These stirring letters will intrigue anyone interested in Indian affairs, nineteenth-century women's studies, or the social history of Victorian America, where Jackson made her mark despite the restrictions on women. Among her correspondents were Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Moncure D. Conway, Henry B. Whipple, Henry L. Dawes, Henry Teller, Carl Schurz, and of course, commissioners of Indian affairs and such prominent editors as Whitelaw Reid, Charles Dudley Warner, and Richard Watson Gilder.The letters are presented in sections on the Ponca and Mission Indian causes, allowing readers to focus on the time period and Indian group of choice.