From Moral Life to Material Being: Julia Francesca and Women's Periodical Writing in the Early Nineteenth Century

[...]she declares to Evelina, "Yet no apostate from religion's laws, / Mine are the paths a pious mother trod" ("To Evelina" 1 Apr. 1809, 5-6). While she insists on imagining women as material as much as moral beings, the trivial nature of her "Miseries" highlights readers' instincts as attentive observers of the world around them. [...]Francesca counters the didactic and disembodied eidolons of earlier women's magazines to present herself as both relatable and authentic- and, importantly, as a practicing writer. [...]New York's fashionable promenade, the street had become an important place for imagining women's visibility in the city. [...]James Kirke Paulding, writing as "Jeremy Cockloft" takes readers of Salmagundi on a "Tour in Broadway" where he meets "a dashing belle, in a thick white veil" and tries "to get a peep at her face" (46). In the context of her reception by other correspondents, her work does more than expand the forms of women's participation in public life; it challenges Francesca's own relegation to the private sphere by revealing an early woman author of urban modernity. Because Ellis, during her lifetime, was known in print primarily as "Julia Francesca," I refer to her by that pseudonym throughout this essay. 2.