Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2006
Abstract
Helen Hunt Jackson was one of America’s most renowned and prolific female writers of the 1870s and 1880s, best known during her lifetime (1830-1885) and into the early twentieth century for her poetry, domestic essays, travel sketches, and moralistic novels. However, as Jackson herself predicted, her most enduring legacy is her writing advocating American Indian rights (Higginson, “Helen” 151). Most significantly, her 1884 novel Ramona protests American Indian displacement in southern California and, more broadly, criticizes Anglo-American conquest through land acquisition. A bestseller when it appeared, Ramona has never gone out of print; has been translated into many languages; was adapted for four movie productions between 1910 and 1936; was scripted for several theater versions as well as the annual Ramona Outdoor Play, held annually in Hemet, California, since 1923; and was the source of a Ramona-centered tourist industry in southern California between 1887 and the 1950s (Moylan 226, DeLyser 80-81). The publication of two new paperback editions of Ramona, in 2002 and 2005, suggests the novel’s continued popularity and its importance in the study of American literature.
Recommended Citation
Ramirez, Karen E. Reading Helen Hunt Jackson's 'Ramona'. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 2006. Digital. Western Writers Series, 171.