The career of Constance Rourke (1885-1941) is one of the richest examples of the American writer's search for a ""usable past"". In this first full-length study of Rourke, Joan Shelley Rubin establishes the context for Rourke's defense of American culture - the controversies that engaged her, the books that influenced her thinking, the premises that lay beneath her vocabulary. With the aid of Rourke's unpublished papers, the author explores her responses to issues that were compelling for her generation of intellectuals.