ABSTRACT
With no indication of a prejudice against women authors and with men and women writers of fiction almost equal numerically, the fact that only a very small number of women published nonfiction essays in the magazine becomes a point worth examining. While the controllers of the magazine displayed no bias against women writers, scholars have been less interested in or friendly to the women who were connected with the magazine. Aldrich published less fiction in his volumes, and the new women writers he introduced were all writers of nonfiction. More characteristic, however, were women knowledgeable on specific topics: Maria Mitchell wrote of another woman astronomer, Harriet Hosmer on sculpture, Elizabeth Peabody on kindergartens, Fanny Kemble on Shakespeare, and Caroline Kirkland on the West. The women who wrote essays for the Atlantic were intelligent, perceptive, and well-educated; among them are a few whose work shows the kind of study and methodology that is characteristic of scholarly writing.
