The Land Before Her

“This is not only a masterful work of scholarship and organization, but a much-needed counter-balance to the much-articulated myth of the American Adam. . . . In redeeming this material from oblivion, Annette Kolodny permits us a privileged look at roots we may otherwise never have known we had.” — Margaret Atwood

“[Kolodny’s] ambitious study of women’s changing responses to the experience of settling the American continent radically revises our understanding of both American history and American literature. . . . Again and again, her sensitivity to issues of gender has led her to see familiar texts in dazzlingly original ways.” — Journal of English and Germanic Philology

"Masterful . . . . It reads like a good detective story, and appeals to the same instincts for discovery of the hidden, for problem solving. In redeeming this material from oblivion, Annette Kolodny permits us a privileged look at roots we may otherwise never have known we had.'