Archives of Desire

“In this sophisticated, impeccably researched volume, Lockwood demonstrates how in the period 1865-1915, both well-known and obscure New England women represented and performed ‘history’ in literary and historiographic texts and in creating heritage tourist sites. Essential.” — CHOICE

"All scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, not just those interested in literary regionalism, gender and sexuality studies, material culture, or performance studies will benefit from reading this volume.” — Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature

“Lockwood’s contribution to literary and historical studies of nineteenth-century America is multifaceted.” — ###New England Quarterly

“Lockwood deftly reveals how much ‘spectral fusions’ performed the most intimate historicism of all, as past women’s lives haunted and inhabited the very bodies of their unmarried subjects” — American Historical Review

“Archives of Desire is filled with ingenious scholarship and dazzling re-creations of the past. The women J. Samaine Lockwood describes are not merely curators of vanishing histories, but also narrators of intimate domestic issues that shape the present and create connections between the past and the near future. A new standard in gender studies.” — Stephanie Foote, University of Illinois Champaign–Urbana

"In this landmark contribution to the study of American history and literary culture at the turn of the twentieth century, J. Samaine Lockwood offers a nuanced analysis of New England’s ties to the nation and its queer past. The women at the heart of this book were revolutionary, intriguing, sexual, and often radical. Archives of Desire chronicles their legacies of dissent.” — Marjorie Pryse, University at Albany, State University of New York