This unique interdisciplinary essay collection offers a fresh perspective on the active involvement of American women authors in the nineteenth-century transatlantic world. Internationally diverse contributors explore topics ranging from women's social and political mobility to their authorship and activism. While a number of essays focus on such well-known writers as Margaret Fuller, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Eliot, Louisa May Alcott, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, other, perhaps lesser-known authors are also included, such as E. D. E. N. Southworth, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Elizabeth Peabody, Jeannette Hart, and Laura Richards. These essays show the spectrum of interests and activities in which nineteenth-century women were involved as they moved, geographically and metaphorically, toward gaining their independence and the right to control their lives. Traveling far and wide―to Italy, France, Great Britain, and the Bahamas―these writers came into contact with realities far different from their own. On topics ranging from homeopathy and literary endeavors to politics and revolution, they conversed with others, reaching and inspiring transnational audiences with their words and deeds, and creating a space for self-expression in the rapidly changing transatlantic world. “This outstanding collection of sophisticated, engaging studies focuses on courageous and bold women who traveled and reported―through letters, articles, essays, fiction, and poems―on their complex social, artistic, and literary engagements with Italy, France, Great Britain, and the Caribbean.”― Susan Belasco , professor emerita of English, University of Nebraska–Lincoln “This outstanding collection of sophisticated, engaging studies focuses on courageous and bold women who traveled and reported―through letters, articles, essays, fiction, and poems―on their complex social, artistic, and literary engagements with Italy, France, Great Britain, and the Caribbean.”--Susan Belasco, professor emerita of English, University of Nebraska–Lincoln “This is a wonderfully rich array of essays on American women’s transatlanticism: it expands beyond England to Italy and other sites, beyond the Grand Tour to creative work and political and racial representation, beyond traditional literary forms to letters, periodicals, visual art, critical reception, and popular culture. Conversations travel in both directions, engaging Europeans as well as Americans. Readers will be rewarded with many surprises and a new, wider map of cosmopolitan culture.”--Phyllis Cole, professor emerita of English, women’s studies, and American studies, Penn State Brandywine, and president, Margaret Fuller Society BETH L. LUECK is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. SIRPA SALENIUS is a senior lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland. NANCY LUSIGNAN SCHULTZ is a professor of English at Salem State University.