When panning for sources, how do you know what's fool’s gold?

I have learned from an afternoon in the library that, just as Indiana Jones never leaves a tomb or ruin undisturbed, you should never underestimate the value of raiding another bibliography about your topic.

In the encyclopedia section, I found two entries about The Female Review and I proceeded to go and retrieve those texts.

Then, I found the texts mentioned in Anne Lombard’s review of Masquerade, a recent historical biography about Sampson.

Finally, I went and looked up the journal articles that I found on JSTOR but were in print and on the shelves.

Three hours, two tried arms and one broken backpack later, I confirmed with the checkout desk that I can indeed checkout as many books as I can carry.

I still need to look up the sources mentioned in Dr. Logan’s and Judith Hiltner’s bibliographies about Sampson. I am a little ashamed that I did not start by doing this after I found their articles but I did confirm in WorldCat that they and Karen Weyler and Daniel Cohen are most likely the only ones who have written scholarly critical articles on the text.

Here is my preliminary bibliography. I am sure it will look very different after I work my way through all of these new sources.


Preliminary Bibliography: Deborah Sampson

Adamson, Lynda G. Notable Women in American History: A Guide to Recommended Biographies and Autobiographies. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999. Print.

Berkin, Carol, and Leslie Horowitz. Women's Voices, Women's Lives: Documents in Early
American History. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998. Print.

Cohen, Daniel A. “Heroic Women Found: Transgressive Feminism, Popular Biography,
and the ‘Tragical Deaths of Beautiful Females’.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society: A Journal of American History and Culture Through 1876 109.1 (1999): 51-97. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.

Evans, Charles. American Bibliography: A Chronological Dictionary of All Books, Pamphlets,
and Periodical Publications Printed in the United States of America from the Genesis of Printing in 1639 Down to and Including the Year 1820. Chicago: Priv. Print. for the author by the Blakely Press, 1903. Print.

Hiltner, Judith R. "'Like a Bewildered Star': Deborah Sampson, Herman Mann, and
Address, Delivered with Applause." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 29.2 (1999): 5-24. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.

---. "'She Bled in Secret': Deborah Sampson, Herman Mann, and the Female Review." Early
American Literature 34.2 (1999): 190-20. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.

Holbrook, Stewart H. Lost Men of American History. New York: Macmillan Co, 1946. Print.
Wolfreys, Julian, Ruth Robbins, Kenneth Womack, and Kara Kalenius. The Continuum

Encyclopedia of Modern Criticism and Theory. New York: Continuum, 2002. Print.
Leonard, Patrick L.. "Deborah Samson: Official Heroine Of The State Of
Massachusetts. " Minerva VI.3 (1988): 61. GenderWatch (GW), ProQuest. Web. 23 Sep. 2010.

Logan, Lisa M. "Columbia's Daughter in Drag; or, Cross-Dressing, Collaboration, and
Authorship in Early American Novels." Feminist Interventions in Early American Studies. 240-252. Tuscaloosa, AL: U of Alabama P, 2006. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.

Mann, Herman, and Deborah S. Gannett. The Female Review: Or, Memoirs of an American
Young Lady; Whose Life and Character Are Peculiarly Distinguished-Being a Continental Soldier, for Nearly Three Years, in the Late American War. During Which Time, She Was Called, with Punctual Exactness, Fidelity and Honor, and Preserved Her Chastity Inviolate, by the Most Artful Concealment of Her Sex. with an Appendix, Containing Characteristic Traits, by Different Hands; Her Taste for Economy, Principles of Domestic Education, &c. Dedham [Mass.]: Printed by Nathaniel and Benjamin Heaton, for the author, 1974.

Mann, Herman. The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson: The Female Soldier in the War
of Revolution. American Women: Images and Realities. New York: Arno Press, 1972. Print.

Mulford, Carla. “Writing Women in early American Studies: On Canons, Feminist
Critique, and the Work of Writing Women into History.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 26.1 (2007): 107-18. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.

Smith, Merril D. Women's Roles in Eighteenth-Century America. Santa Barbara, Calif:
Greenwood, 2010. Print.

Weyler, Karen A. "An Actor in the Drama of Revolution: Deborah Sampson, and Performance in the Creation of Celebrity." Feminist Interventions in Early American Studies. 183-193. Tuscaloosa, AL: U of Alabama P, 2006. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.

Whitton, Mary O. These Were the Women: U.S.A. 1776-1860. New York: Hastings House, 1954.
Print.

Young, Alfred F. Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Print.