The editors have curated an impressive collection devoted to reexamining Freeman since the second wave feminist reclamation of this author, who, along with others, had faded into obscurity in accordance with changing (masculinist) literary tastes. […] This volume succeeds admirably in restoring increased complexity to the critical appraisal of Freeman’s oeuvre.
- Wendy Ryden, Long Island University Post, Edith Wharton Review
New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman offers a fresh look at this remarkable 19th-century writer. The essays capture the range of Freeman’s work, "with and against the grain," and the problem with traditional categorization, uncovering alternative modes of critical thinking about a writer whose work spans almost 50 years.
- Leah Blatt Glasser, Mount Holyoke College,
This book does not counter the common critical approaches to Freeman’s work, but rather New Perspectives builds upon these readings and creates innovative interpretations. [...] Overall, New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman makes a compelling case for this American author’s relevance not only as a New England regionalist and a late nineteenth/early twentieth-century writer, but also as a forceful female voice that speaks strongly to all readers today.
- Cara Erdheim Kilgallen, Studies in American Naturalism
New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Reading with and against the Grain is a welcome contribution to our understanding of a highly prolific writer whose work deserves the new attention of the kind the book itself represents. [...] all these essays separately and together give us valuable new ways of seeing and reading Freeman both in and out of our own time.
- Bridget Bennett, University of Leeds, Transatlantica