SOURCE: “Nineteenth-Century American Feminist Humor: Marietta Holley's ‘Samantha Novels,’” in Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 22, No. 2, Fall, 1989, pp. 12-25.

In the following essay, Ross places Holley's fiction within the context of nineteenth-century American humor, and examines her work in relation to current feminist humor theory.

Nineteenth-century American humor is not known for the contributions of women.¹ The principal contributors are men who often used pseudonyms such as Mark Twain, Bill Nye, Josh Billings, and Artemus Ward. Though only Mark Twain has been admitted to the canon, hundreds of other male humorists wrote during this time and made their livings from the sale of their works to magazines and newspapers or by performing excerpts from their writing on the lecture circuit. However, despite the meagre attention paid to them, there are a few nineteenth-century women writers of humor whose names and works have survived. These names...