Gala-Days

Gala-Days is a collection of essays and sketches by the American writer Gail Hamilton (the pen name of Mary Abigail Dodge, 1833–1896), published in Boston by Ticknor and Fields in 1863 and running to about 436 pages. The title carries an evident irony: what the book offers is not silks and banquets but, in a brisk first-person voice, excursions, visits, journeys, household chores, and social observations drawn from everyday life. The volume consists of independent pieces, among them the title essay Gala-Days (in two parts, opening comically with the narrator dragging a trunk downstairs and resolving to write a book of travels), A Call to My Countrywomen, A Spasm of Sense, Camilla's Concert, Cheri, Side-Glances at Harvard, Class-Day, Success in Life, and Happiest Days. The author excels at turning homely details into comic scenes through exaggerated dialogue, abrupt metaphors, and self-mockery, while attending, against the backdrop of the Civil War, to women's circumstances, education, and the temper of society, in a tone that is forthright yet warm. In her lifetime Hamilton was an active newspaper and magazine contributor and abolitionist who also served as secretary to a congressman, and her prose was known for its wit, candor, and argumentative verve; this book is among the representative works of her early essay writing. The work is in the public domain and the full text can be read through channels such as Project Gutenberg.