American Female Patriotism.
A Nationalistic Essay
[Warner, Susan]. Wetherell, Elizabeth [pseudonym]. American Female Patriotism. A prize essay. New York: Edward H. Fletcher, 1852.
32mo.; publishers ads on front and rear endpapers; a.e.g.; black cloth elaborately stamped in blind and gilt. In the large specially made cloth slipcase allocated for small items.
First edition of this prize-winning essay, the best composition by a woman answering the question, “How may an American woman best show her Patriotism?” The prize—which included a fifty-dollar “premium”—was awarded by a committee comprised of E. W. Chester, S. D. Burchard, and Asa D. Smith. Wetherell’s answer to their question was aggressively nationalistic and very much in the spirit of the Young America writers working in New York at that time: “Dare to be American,” she exhorted her readers. Reject “foreign distinctions” and mannerisms; reject even their languages. “Speak English and be proud.” Her essay, in the form of a dialogue between a husband and wife, “takes its readers through the vaguely European affectations of well-bred women of Warner’s day.”
Before its separate publication in this “neat and portable form,” the essay appeared in the New York magazine The Ladies Wreath, an advertisement for which appears in the rear. The publisher capitalized on Warner’s recent success by identifying her on the title page as the author of Wide, Wide World and Queechy.
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