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No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California, 1849-1869

Edited by Ida Rae Egli

370 pages (6 x 9), with b&w photos
Trade paper, ISBN: 1-890771-01-5, $14.95

Published in conjunction with Rick Heide

Now in its second edition with a new introduction by the editor, No Rooms of Their Own brings together an important collection of writings by women of California’s Gold Rush era, from the celebrated Dame Shirley and Ina Coolbrith to lesser known but equally eloquent writers. This diverse anthology includes poetry, fiction, essays, memoirs, diary entries, and writings by minority women, all of which embody the life and spirit of the new state and often express ideas that resonate in the California of the present.

Reviews:

"Full of interesting and entertaining work that has been undeservedly ignored over the years."—Bloomsbury Review

"The journal entries, stories and poems by fifteen mid-19th-century California women offer fresh and immediate perspectives on their lives and times."—Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents

First Contact

Sarah Eleanor Royce, A Frontier Lady
Lucy Young, Out of the Past
Dame Shirley, A Trip Into the Mines: Letter Fifth, Letter Tenth, Letter Eleventh
Helen McCowen Carpenter, The Mitchells
Frances Fuller Victor, How Jack Hastings Sold His Mine
Josephine Clifford McCrackin, La Graciosa

Making Rooom

Jessie Benton Fremont, My Grizzly Bear, Sierra Neighbors
Hipolita Orendain de Medina, Delirium
Georgiana Kirby, Journal of Georgiana Kirby, A Tale of the Redwoods
Ina Coolbrith, Mother's Grief, Mariposa Lily, Memory
Mary Hallock Foote, In Exile

Questioning Roles

Charlotte L. Brown, Affidavit of Oral Testimony
Ella Sterling Cummins Mighels, Portrait of a California Girl
Adah Isaacs Menken, Resurgam, Genius
Ada Clare, The Past, The Man's Sphere and Influence, Taking Leave, About the Fashions, The Fatal Pie, Robinson's Gymnasium, The Tender Passion, The "Blue Stocking", Verdina

Author Biography:

Raised in Potter Valley, Mendocino County, Ida Rae Egli is a Californian whose great-grandparents immigrated to California during the gold rush period. She graduated from Sonoma State University and later earned her master's degree in American Literature from San Francisco State University. She currently teaches English at Santa Rosa Junior College and lives in Sonoma County.