Kelly pushes the boundaries of labor, social, and women's history to challenge a number of core conclusions about the transformation to a market society in the antebellum North.... Reading letters and diaries, friendship and commonplace books, and published prose and poetry for what they reveal about both experience and representation, Kelly insists that we take women seriously as actors and thinkers, whose daily lives and the meanings they made of them at once signified and effected important changes in gender and class identities, roles, and relations.
Crista DeLuzio, Southern Methodist University
Modernism/Modernity
Kelly's work is concerned, above all, with the place of women in the period. The reader will find fascinating sections of the book dealing with domestic tasks and responsibilities, paid and unpaid work, education, courtship and marriage, the transformation of love, private and public sociability, and fashion and consumption.... This is a well-analyzed, carefully researched study.
Billie Barnes Jensen, San Jose State University
History: The Review of New Books
With complexity and thoughtfulness the author addresses middle-class formation, rural capitalism, separate spheres ideology, and the contours of the affectionate family.... This provocative book demands consideration for its creative thinking alone.
Lisa Wilson, Connecticut College, New London, CT
The Journal of American History
This rich written legacy first spelled out the superiority of rural life over urban society as a way of clarifying economic change.... This fine study should stimulate other scholars to pursue and evaluate Kelly's methods and insights.
Mary H. Blewett, University of Massachusetts
American Historical Review