E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Story of America’s Famous Forgotten Nineteenth-Century Author

Emma Southworth, who published under the name E.D.E.N. Southworth, was one of the most well-known American writers of the mid-1800s, with many books and magazine serials to her name. However, unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe (one of Southworth’s friends and contemporaries), Southworth’s life and works have not remained well-known, a project that scholar Neal aims to remedy with this delightful biography. She explores Southworth’s eventful life, tracking from her complex childhood, to her ill-fated marriage to an inventor who eventually left for Brazil, to her writing work. Southworth created and maintained a strong publishing relationship and friendship with Robert Bonner, owner of the New York Ledger, for whom she wrote exclusively for 30 years. Neal makes a compelling argument that Southworth’s life and works are worthy of study and reappraisal and that her writings portray independent heroines living adventurous lives at a time when such depictions were uncommon.