"Writing for Immortality studies the lives and works of four nineteenth-century American women who sought recognition as serious literary artists: Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Constance Fenimore Woolson. Combining literary criticism and cultural history, Anne E. Boyd examines how these authors challenged the masculine connotation of "artist" and struggled to place themselves in the literary pantheon. Redrawing the boundaries between male and female literary spheres and between American and British literary traditions, Boyd shows how these writers rejected the didacticism of the previous generation of women authors and instead drew their inspiration from the most accomplished "literary" figures of their day: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and George Eliot." "Placing the works and experiences of Alcott, Phelps, Stoddard, and Woolson within contemporary discussions about genius and the American artist, Boyd reaches a sobering conclusion. Although the democratic ideals implicit in such concepts encouraged these women, they nonetheless faced lingering prejudices."--BOOK JACKET.