Even now, most scholarship on Southworth focuses on her most famous novel, The Hidden Hand. Southworth enjoyed enormous public success in her day-she published nearly fifty novels during her career-but that very popularity, combined with her gender, led to her almost complete neglect by the critical establishment before the emergence of academic feminism.

If you see a price sticker on a book, please ignore it.The prolific nineteenth-century writer E. Removing stickers from a book may damage it, so we refrain from doing so. This book is intended for students of American fiction women's fiction nineteenth- century American fiction and cultural studies, as well as general readers.Īll of our books are second hand, and while you may not get the exact copy shown in the picture, all of our books are in very good condition. Serialized three times by popular demand before appearing in book form, The Hidden Hand exudes irresistible high spirits and cheer, and still retains the capacity to surprise and delight that enchanted its first readers. Besides, the neighbourhood is infested with evil-doers - Black Donald, the notorious bandit, and Gabriel Le Noir, the owner of the plantation adjoining - combine to make her life full of excitement and peril. In another instant her resolution was taken and her course determined.' Rescued from life on the streets in New York by a southern plantation owner, with his own reasons for befriending her, Capitola is too active and adventurous to settle for the life of a southern belle. As by a flash of lighting she saw that every feature of her imminent danger - the loneliness of the woods, the lateness of the hour, the recklessness of her fearful companion, and her own weakness. `At the touch of that ruthless hand, at the sound of that giving voice, all her faculties instantly collected and concentrated themselves upon the emergency. The Hidden Hand (1888) is an exuberant action comedy, featuring fearless Capitola Black, a self-styled female Don Quixote, and the prototype of innumerable adventure heroines.

The Hidden Hand by E.D.E.N. Southworth