A Woman's Dilemma

The second edition of A Woman's Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution updates Rosemarie Zagarri's biography of one of the most accomplished women of the Revolutionary era. The work places Warren into the social and political context in which she lived and examines the impact of Warren's writings on Revolutionary politics and the status of women in early America.

• Presents readers with an engaging and accessible historical biography of an accomplished literary and political figure of the Revolutionary era
• Provides an incisive narrative of the social and intellectual forces that contributed to the coming of the American Revolution
• Features a variety of updates, including an in-depth Bibliographical Essay, multiple illustrations, a timeline of Warren's life, and chapter-end study questions
• Includes expanded coverage of women during the Revolutionary Era and the Early American Republic

Acknowledgments viii

A Partial Genealogy of the Family of Mercy Otis Warren xi

Map: Massachusetts in 1782 xii

Timeline: Mercy Otis Warren/The American Revolution xiii

Introduction xv

1 The First Friends of Her Heart 1

2 Politics as a Family Affair 23

3 Her Pen as a Sword 49

4 War Widows 79

5 An Old Republican 99

6 “History is not the Province of the Ladies” 135

Conclusion: The Line Beyond Her Sex 164

Bibliographical Essay 172

Index 186

Rosemarie Zagarri is University Professor and Professor of History at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She is the author of The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776–1850 (1987) and Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (2007). She is also editor of David Humphreys's "Life of General Washington" with George Washington's "Remarks" (1991).

A Woman's Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution
Rosemarie Zagarri

"A landmark classic, written by a master historian, A Woman's Dilemma remains the best biography of Mercy Otis Warren. Warren is not a woman lost to history, but her life and legacies are complicated. With her expansive knowledge of early American politics, Rosemarie Zagarri places Warren in her proper historical context, all the while rendering her a full human being."
—Catherine Allgor, University of California

"Zagarri's deft and perceptive analysis of a complex, extraordinary – and too often ignored – woman of America's founding generation will allow readers to view the political issues and gender constraints that dominated the revolutionary era through a new lens."
—Sheila Skemp, University of Mississippi