Page Links: | Primary Works | Selected Bibliography 1980-Present | MLA Style Citation of this Web Page |



Famous more for popular culture and historical Civil War "Gates" stories, Phelps is receiving reconsideration as a serious writer of realistic fiction. She has written about labor conditions and has challenged the notion that industrialization leads to progress. Her characters, many are women, suffer and do not reap the rewards of hard work.

Primary Works

The Gates Ajar, 1868; The Silent Partner, 1871; The Story of Avis, 1877; Doctor Zay, 1882; A Singular Life, 1895; Chapters from a Life (autobiography), 1896.

Selected Tales, Essays, and Poems. Eds. Elizabeth Duquette and Cheryl Tevlin. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2014.

Selected Bibliography 1980-Present

Beebe, Ann. "Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1815-1852)." in Knight, Denise D. ed. Writers of the American Renaissance: An A-to-Z Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003.

Bergman, Jill. 'Oh the Poor Women!': Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's Motherly Benevolence." in Bergman, Jill and Bernardi, Debra. eds. Our Sisters' Keepers: Nineteenth-Century Benevolence Literature by American Women. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2005.

Boyd, Anne E. Writing for Immortality: Women and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004.

Coultrap McQuin, Susan. Doing literary business: American women writers in the nineteenth century. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1990. PS147 .C68

Dicker, Rory. "The Mirroring of Heaven and Earth; Female Spirituality in Elizabeth Prentiss's Stepping Heavenward and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The Gates Ajar." in Groover, Kristina K. ed. Things of the Spirit: Women Writers Constructing Spirituality. Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 2004.

Goodling, Sara B. "The Silent Partnership: Naturalism and Sentimentalism in the Novels of Rebecca Harding Davis and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps." in Papke, Mary E. ed. Twisted from the Ordinary: Essays on American Literary Naturalism. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2003.

Harde, Roxanne. "'One Extra Little Girl': Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's Orphans." in Elbert, Monika. ed. Enterprising Youth: Social Values and Acculturation in Nineteenth-Century American Children's Literature. NY: Routledge, 2008.

Huf, Linda. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: The Writer as Heroine in American Literature. NY: Ungar, 1983.

Kessler, Carol F. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Boston: Twayne, 1982. PS3143 .K47

Narbona Carrión and María Dolores. "Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers' European Connections: The Case of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps." in Macpherson, Heidi S. and Kaufman, Will. eds. New Perspectives in Translantic Studies. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2002.

Privett, Ronna C. A Comprehensive Study of American Writer Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 1844-1911: Art for Truth's Sake. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2003.

Rigsby, Mary B. "Elizabeth Stuart Phelps." Harris, Sharon M., Jacobs, Heidi L. M. and Putzi, Jennifer. eds. American Women Prose Writers, 1870-1920. Detroit: Gale, 2000.

Showalter, Elaine. ed. The Vintage Book of American Women Writers. NY: Vintage, 2011.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 5: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http://www.paulreuben.website/pal/chap5/phelps.html (provide page date or date of your login). 
 

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