Ruth Hall (Annotated)

Ruth Hall (1854) is a pioneering American novel of domestic realism and literary self-fashioning, tracing a widowed woman's descent into poverty and her rise to economic independence through authorship. Written in a brisk, episodic style sharpened by satire and sentiment, the book exposes the hypocrisies of family, marriage, publishing, and middle-class respectability. Its bold autobiographical te...