Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-213) index.

• Introduction


• 1: Abandoned and Adopted in a New World


• 2: Problems of Patrimony: Benjamin Franklin and Ann Sargent Gage


• 3: Adoption Averted in The Scarlet Letter


• 4: Plotting Adoption: Dependence and Independence


• 5: Child Saving, Nation Building: The Wide, Wide World and The Lamplighter


• 6: Servitude and Homelessness: Harriet Wilson's Our Nig


• 7: The Limits of Nurture: Louisa May Alcott's Adoption Fiction


• 8: Charity Begins and Ends at Home: Edith Wharton's Summer


• Index

Carol J. Singley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, Camden. She is the author of Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit (Cambridge, 1995) and the editor of The American Child: A Cultural Studies Reader (Rutgers UP, 2003), Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth: A Casebook (OUP, 2003) and A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton (OUP, 2003).