American Reaction to 1830s French Fiction

FAIN: FT-52266-04

Gary Williams
University of Idaho (Moscow, ID 83844-9803)

My work on Julia Ward Howe has made me aware of the importance she and other antebellum American writers attached to the early novels of the French writer George Sand. Nearly 40 years have passed since scholars have examined materials recording the impact of Sand and other French writers of the 1830s on American literary production. I wish to investigate this phenomenon in light of previously-unscrutinized materials, both manuscripts and print sources. I will spend my grant period reading at the NY Public Library, the NY Historical Society, and Harvard’s Houghton Library (resources not easily available to an Idaho-based scholar). I will write an article-length study and lay groundwork for a sabbatical application.

Associated Products

"What Margaret Thought of George" (Book Section)
Title: "What Margaret Thought of George"
Author: Gary Williams
Editor: Jana Argersinger, Phyllis Cole
Abstract: Analysis of American writer Margaret Fuller's reading notes on the novels of French writer George Sand, as well as Fuller's published comments about Sand. The article's argument is that Sand prompted Fuller to think about how she might write in Sand's mode (quite different from her own) and that a Fuller sketch, "The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain," is evidence for this influence.
Year: 2012
Publisher: University of Georgia Press (not yet in production)
Book Title: Exaltadas: A Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism

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