Walt Whitman's ""Leaves of Grass"" and 19th-century Women Reformers - Tapa dura

"Leaves of Grass is essentially a woman's book: the women do not know it, but every now and then a woman shows that she knows it: it speaks out the necessities, its cry is the cry of the right and wrong of the woman sex- of the woman first of all, of the facts of creation first of all- of the feminine: speaks out loud: warns, encourages, persuades, points the way."--Walt Whitman "Ceniza has written the premier study of Whitman and the culture of 19th-century feminism."--Ezra Greenspan, University of South Carolina "Ceniza's study provides the fullest account yet of Whitman's relation to the American feminists of midcentury. . . . Ceniza's book deals with . . . questions from a feminist position that clearly admires Whitman profoundly. She has made excellent use of archival material, uncovering a wealth of private or little-known comments on Whitman's work by leading American feminists of the mid-nineteenth century. Ultimately a study in social history, Ceniza's work will enable a significant reappraisal of Whitman and 'the woman question.'" --American Literature

Walt Whitman and 19th-Century Women Reformers documents Whitman's friendships with women during the 1850s, the decade of Whitman's most creative period. The book reveals startling connections between the first three editions of Leaves of Grass and the texts generated by the women he knew during this period, many of whom were radical activists in the women's rights movement. Ceniza documents the progression of the National Women's Rights movement through the lives and writings of three of its leaders - Abby Hills Price, Paulina Wright Davis, and Ernestine L. Rose. By juxtaposing the texts written by these women with Leaves, Ceniza shows that Whitman used many of the same arguments and rhetorical gestures as his female activist friends.