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Further Reading

Abortion and Contraception, Courtship, Marriage, Divorce, and Sexual Coercion, Gender Relations, Law and Women in Court, Case Studies, Pomfret, Connecticut


On abortion and contraception

Brodie, Janet Farrell. Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Gordon, Linda. Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman, 1976.

Mohr, James C. Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolutions of National Policy, 1800-1900. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Mohr, James C. Doctors and the Law: medical jurisprudence in nineteenth-century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Reagan, Leslie J. When Abortion was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. ACLS Humanities E-Book Link

Shorter, Edward. A History of Women's Bodies. New York: Basic Books, 1982. Especially chap. 8.

Solinger, Rickie. The Abortionist: A Woman against the Law. New York: Free Press and Maxwell Macmillan International, 1994.

Solinger, Rickie. Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America. New York: New York University Press, 2005.

Solinger, Rickie. Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade. New York: Routledge, 1992; 2000.

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On courtship, marriage, divorce, and sexual coercion

Bailey, Joanne. Unquiet Lives: Marriage and Marriage Breakdown in England, 1660-1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Block, Sharon. Rape and Sexual Power in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Cott, Nancy F. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Cott, Nancy F. "Divorce and the Changing Status of Women in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts." William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 38 (1976), 586-614.

Cott, Nancy F. "Eighteenth-Century Family and Social Life Revealed in the Massachusetts Divorce Records." Journal of Social History 10 (1976), 20-43.

Fissell, Mary E. "Hairy Women and Naked Truths: Gender and the Politics of Knowledge in Aristotle’s Masterpiece." William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 60 (2003), 43-74.

Fissell, Mary E. Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Foster, Hannah Webster. The Coquette [1797 novel]. Ed. Cathy N. Davidson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Hirsch, Alison Duncan. "The Thrall Divorce Case: A Family Crisis in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut." Women & History No. 4 (1982), 43-75.

Hodes, Martha. White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-century South. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

Kenslea, Timothy. The Sedgwicks in Love: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage in the Early Republic. Boston: Northeastern University Press; Lebanon, NH : University Press of New England, 2006.

Lyons, Clare A. Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Pagan, John Ruston. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa, Or, the History of a Young Lady [1747-48 novel]. A modern edition of the full text (1536 pages!) (with introduction and notes by Angus Ross) is published by Penguin Books (1986). An abridged, one-volume edition often used in college classrooms is published by Houghton Mifflin in their Riverside editions.

Rothman, Ellen K. Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1984.

Smith, Daniel Scott and Michael S. Hindus. "Premarital Pregnancy in America, 1640-1971: An Overview and Interpretation." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (1975), 537-570.

Thompson, Roger. Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.

Twinam, Ann. Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher and Lois K. Stabler. "'Girling of it' in Eighteenth-Century New Hampshire." The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife 10 (1985), 24-36.

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On gender relations in the 17th and 18th century Anglo-American world

Brown, Kathleen M. Nasty Wenches, Good Wives, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Crane. Elaine Forman Crane. Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change, 1630-1800. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

Kamensky, Jane. Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987.

Karlsen, Carol. "Women and Gender," [an excellent overview of the recent scholarship on North America]. In A Companion to Colonial America. Ed., Daniel Vickers. London: Blackwell, 2003. 194-235.

Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Lombard, Anne S. Making Manhood: Growing Up Male in Colonial New England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Morgan, Jennifer L. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Norton, Mary Beth. Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Shepard, Alexandra. Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Thomas, Keith. "The Double Standard." Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959), 195-216.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. New York: Knopf, 2001.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812. New York: Knopf, 1990.

Wilson, Lisa. Ye Heart of a Man: The Domestic Life of Men in Colonial New England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Wulf, Karin. Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

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On law and women in court

Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. Women before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1769. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Hull, N. E. H. Female Felons: Women and Serious Crime in Colonial Massachusetts. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Rosen, Deborah A. "Women and Property across Colonial America: A Comparison of Legal Systems in New Mexico and New York." William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 60 (2003), 355-81.

Salmon, Marylynn. Women and the Law of Property in Early America. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Stretton, Tim. Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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For additional fascinating Early American case studies on related issues

On a case of sexual ambiguity, see these two interpretations: Kathleen Brown, "’Changed . . . into the Fashion of a Man’: The Politics of Sexual Difference in a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Settlement," Journal of the History of Sexuality 6 (1995), 171-93; and Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers (see above), 183-197.

Cohen, Patricia Cline. The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York. New York: Knopf, 1998.

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On the Pomfret area

Larned Ellen D. History of Windham County, Connecticut. Vol. I. Worcester, MA: [by the author], 1874; reprinted by the Pequot Press, 1976. Volume II is also available in full on Google Books.

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Page Created: December 31, 2008
Last Modified: January 1, 2009

Questions? Comments? Contact Professor Cornelia Dayton (cornelia.dayton@uconn.edu).