The Faith of a (Woman) Writer:

by Alice Kessler-Harris (Editor), William McBrien (Editor)

Reflecting the salient undercurrents of contemporary researh on women writers, this volume is an appraisal of the work of the writer as woman and presents critics' perceptions about how women writers have dealt with the complexity of changing female visions in the twentieth century. Each of the thirty-four essays, contributed by some of today's most distinguished writers, speaks to the work of a particular twentieth-century woman writer, and each constitutes a contribution to the scholarly debate. Questions are raised as to the appropriate posture a critic should adopt, and whether a critic of women's writing should deal with the work as the product of a woman's hand, dwelling on the sensibilities of the female consciousness, or assume that the proper point of departure remains the artistic and aesthetic norms that have emerged from generations of male-defined practice.

359 pages, Hardcover

First published February 4, 1988

About the author

Alice Kessler-Harris is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History at Columbia University, in New York City and former president of the Organization of American Historians. She specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender.

Kessler-Harris received her B.A. from Goucher College in 1961 and her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1968.

She contributed the piece "Pink Collar Ghetto, Blue Collar Token" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.

Her newest book, A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman, was published in June 2012. Her other books include Gendering Labor History, which collects some of her best-known essays on women and wage work; In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America, which won several prizes including the Joan Kelly Prize, the Philip Taft award, and the Bancroft Prize. Among her other fellowships and awards, Kessler-Harris has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center in Durham, North Carolina and at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the past president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association.

(from Wikipedia)