Includes works or excerpts from works contemporary with the main text.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 428-435).

This definitive edition reprints the text of Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron-Mills together with a broad selection of historical and cultural documents that open up the novella to the consideration of a range social and cultural issues vital to Davis's nineteenth century. Special attention is given to nineteenth-century American discussions of work and social class, moral and social reform, the development of American art and industry, and the position of the woman writer.