Hope Leslie (1827), set in the seventeenth-century New England, is a novel that forced readers to confront the consequences of the Puritans’ subjugation and displacement of the indigenous Indian population at a time when contemporaries were demanding still more land from the Cherokees, the Chickasaws, and the Choctaws.

"This handsome reprint ... makes available after many decades the New Englander's tale of seventeeth-century Puritans, and their relations with the indigenous Indian population." -- Nineteeth-Century Literature

" A splendidly conceived edition of Sedwick's historical romance. Highly recommended." --Choice

"Develop(s) the connections between patriarchal authority within the Puritan state and its policy of dispossessing and exterminating Indians. The different heritage it envisions explicitly link white women and Indians and elaborates a communal concept of liberty at odds with the individualistic concept which predominated in American culture." -- Legacy

Mary Kelley is Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. The author of Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America, she has also coauthored The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women’s Rights and Woman’s Sphere. Most recently, she edited The Portable Margaret Fuller.

Catharine Maria Sedgwick (December 28, 1789 – July 31, 1867) was one of the most notable female novelists of the early nineteeth century. She wrote works set in the colonial and early American periods, and combined a naturalistic and romantic style with protests against Puritan oppressiveness. Her spirited female characters stood in direct contrast to the traditional roles of women of the period.