| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WHQ online. About 205 words from this article are provided below; about 456 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the Western Historical Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the Western Historical Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Western Historical Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Western Historical Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.3 | The History Cooperative

Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life. By Kate Phillips. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. x + 370 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95, £24.95.)
In this new evaluation of Helen Hunt Jackson's life and letters, Kate Phillips demonstrates how meticulous research is essential to any revisionist study. Phillips own gifts as a writer make this work also a flawless read.	1
Revisiting the scholarly territory of the first and only creditable biography on Jackson, Ruth Odell's Helen Hunt Jackson (New York, 1939), Phillips reconsiders the foundational research for that book, but extends the scholarship to include 314 personal Jackson letters, which add emotional, psychological, and factual depth. An exceedingly private person who avoided public speculations on her thoughts and feelings, Jackson instructed friends, relatives, and publishers to burn existing correspondence, manuscripts, and the like before her death. Yet from collections across the country and even from great-grandnephew, William S. Jackson III, who during the research period discovered a new cache of letters in a suitcase in a house in Denver, Phillips has reconstructed an epistolary trail deepening our understanding of Jackson and her varied work in poetry, travel writing, domestic writing, fiction, and Indian Reform work.	. . .

There are about 456 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.