The literary works of four American women who lived before 1900 deserve to be introduced, if not reintroduced, to the study of literature in the United States, because of their literary merit, variety, and valuable contributions to American literary history. In a journal edited from a diary kept during a round-trip horseback journey from Boston to New York, Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727) wrote in the tradition of Puritan diarists, with a delightful sense of humor. The able literary critic, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), composed distinctly original essays and literary reviews, while her contemporary, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), formulated many of the feminist principles which Susan B. Anthony (a close friend) and other feminists made famous, edited the "History of Woman Suffrage," and explained her radical feminism in an autobiography. In a speech delivered at an 1851 women's rights convention, Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) eloquently pointed out the flaws in the logic of preceding male speakers and persuasively argued for equal rights and privileges for women. In reading these and other works of American women, women may come to think of themselves as members of a full and equal half of the human species. (JM)