ABSTRACT
E. Jane Gay (1830-1919) never publicly admitted her authorship of The New Yankee D oodle (New York, 1868), a scathingly sarcastic verse history of the Civil War so detailed that the book reached 341 pages. Dedicated to those who fought the monster treason “in order that the Union might be perpetual, and freedom made universal wher ever the national emblem floats in the sunshine of heaven,” this Union Aenead, constricted by the “Yankee Doodle” verse format, reached into the emotional, political, and historical aspects of the war and cap tured them in the copious details of daily war events. Gay was born in New Hampshire and lived the last thirteen years of her life in England, but nothing is known of the rest of her life, and she is not listed in any American literary histories. As reticent as Widow Bedott and Josiah Allen’s Wife among northeastern female humorists, Gay shrank from public acknowledgment of her work perhaps because of the acidity of her portraits and the horror of some of her narrative details. A second amended edition of A New Yankee D oodle was prepared but never printed. Gay’s identity is established only by four index cards in the Library of Congress, remains of notes obtained from her niece in 1951.
