Sarah Ewing Hall, whose writings on topics ranging from women's education to biblical criticism were widely read in her day, is perhaps best known for her Conversations on the Bible (1818), which was popular in America and England. Hall contributed to the influential Port Folio, a significant and successful early American literary periodical, which sold more than two thousand copies per issue. Founded by Joseph Dennie and later edited by Hall's son, John Ewing Hall, the journal provided an outlet for Sarah Hall, who contributed criticism, verse, and essays on a broad range of topics, many of them treating issues affecting women. Indeed her writings reveal her concerns about women's roles in the public life of the nation as well as her broader concerns about the development of an American literary nationalism.

Sarah Ewing Hall was born in Philadelphia in 1761, the daughter of the Reverend John Ewing and Hannah...