From the “raving mother”—the enslaved woman threatened with the loss of her child portrayed in tracts about antebellum bondage--to the pious angels dotting the pages of Godey’s Lady Book, Nora Doyle’s elegant investigation exposes the sentimental, the sensational and the compelling elements that defined women during early national period. Yet as Doyle discovers, modern motherhood is saturated with fallout from this era. Narratives of motherhood and other important voices shine through in this compelling history of the maternal body. Written under the supervision of Jacquelyn Dowd Hall.