Readings of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman in and beyond the “English Craze”

There was an “English craze” for Mary Wilkins Freeman among reviewers in the early 1890s, and this chapter studies how the craze and later readings of Freeman drew on conflicting impulses of Anglo-Saxonism and various types of dissent, including feminist dissent. In Freeman reception, the mainstream press radically differs from the attention she received in women’s magazines such as Atalanta, the Woman’s Herald, and Shafts. This chapter addresses the implications of this split for all the writers discussed in this book.