Friendship in a Nunnery; or, the American Fugitive, by Phebe Gibbes

Gibbes’s Friendship in a Nunnery; or, the American Fugitive, presents a fictional mash-up of two of 1778s blaring headlines: the controversial Catholic Relief Act, and the ongoing political crisis in North America. Published in September, three months after the June passage of legislation that offered new freedoms to British Catholics, and on the heels of France’s official recognition of the United States (February 1778), Gibbes’s novel exploits the rhetoric of sensibility, Gothic tropes, and the epistolary form to voice familiar prejudices against Catholicism and to air opinions about the rights, obligations, and national temperament of Americans. Through the trials of several young heroines, detailed in 64 letters, Gibbes also decries the obstacles women face in patriarchal systems that value them chiefly as property and hold them to untenable feminine ideals. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this title will be of great interest to Literary History.