This dissertation provides a critical reassessment of the historical and modern conceptions of early American novelist Hannah Webster Foster as part of a larger disciplinary move toward recovering authors, primarily women, whose work has been lost or neglected by scholars. Although Foster is a fairly prominent writer from this early national period, remarkably little is known about her life due to her desire for anonymity and personal privacy. As a result, much of Foster’s legacy has been constructed through a combination of problematic assumptions related to the author’s class and gender as well as biases by those attempting to refashion the author according to contemporary approaches. While these concerns are examined in this study, much of this dissertation hinges on new opportunities for Foster scholarship by offering historical evidence related to and annotation of a recovered text to present a fuller perspective of Foster than has previously been available. Through an analysis of this recovered text, this dissertation challenges modern perceptions of Foster to show that Foster may best be understood through the ways she consistently models republicanism through her writings.

"The Wicked Man's Portion" uses crime writing as a means to measure modernity in early America. Crime writing does things all too familiarly "modern"; it imagines audiences in need of moral instruction, citizens questioning the decisions of those in power, and men and women seeking reassurance that their community was safe, just, and moral. Crime writing pries open the dialectic between the expectations of authority and individuals' experiences. What emerges is the concept of a moral citizen, a self-reliant individual sharing responsibility for a well-ordered community. The first chapter examines typological interpretations of scripture in execution sermons revealing the interrelation between religion and law. Chapters two and three focus on the interaction between criminal law and beliefs in the supernatural; chapter two looks at supernatural crimes and forensic methods, such as those surrounding witch trials, and chapter three examines arguments for capital punishment that hinged upon divine involvement in human affairs. The fourth chapter discusses gallows publications' functions in the public sphere and contributions to inchoate democracy. The final chapter asks how equity defined punishment in economic terms. This chapter pays particular attention variations of punishment determined by race, class, and gender.

ABSTRACT The early twentieth century saw changing attitudes in gender roles and the advancement of the "New Woman." Despite the decline in the availability of homesteading land in the US West, homesteading still offered a means for women to achieve or enact newfound independence, and the letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart, Elizabeth Corey, and Cecilia Hennel Hendricks offer a varied view of the female homesteading experience. This dissertation focuses upon the functionality of epistolary discourse from early twentieth century homesteading women within a literary and historical framework in order to establish the significance of letters as literary texts and examine the methodology involved in creating epistolary identities. Chapter one provides background on the history of the letter in America. It also as introduces a theoretical framework regarding life writing, feminism, and epistolary discourse that inform this study, by scholars such as Phillipe LeJeune, Leigh Gilmore, Janet Altman, Julie Watson, and Sidonie Smith. Chapter two delves into the published letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart and the way in which her writing, when situated within a US western literary framework, serves as a reaction to the masculine western hero. Chapter three considers the epistolary relationships evident in the letters of Elizabeth Corey and the construction of gender identity within epistolarity. Chapter four focuses upon Cecilia Hennel Hendricks and the historical and feminist context of her letters, with a particular emphasis upon the "love letter." The conclusion examines the progression of the letter in the twentieth century and forms of online discourse that can be directly linked to its evolution. Far from being simply a form of communication, these letters reveal the history of a time, a place, a people, function as narrative literary texts, and aid in developing identities. For readers and scholars they tell offer a glimpse into life for women in the early twentieth century and highlight the significance of letters as a literary form.