Sarah Pierpont Edwards was a religious mystic and the wife of Jonathan Edwards, one of the leading American evangelists of the mid eighteenth century. Of Sarah Edwards's entire literary output, which was not large, only a few letters and one spiritual narrative survive. To assume, however, that she had no great influence ignores the larger text that Sarah Edwards created. As Amanda Porterfield and other scholars have pointed out, Edwards's artistry took the form of her life itself, and that life has had a far-ranging influence on American letters, beginning with her acting as an example of true piety for her husband, not only as evidence in his text but as the source for many of his ideas about religious psychology. Indeed, the text of Sarah Edwards's life keeps showing up in American letters. Every minister who visited the Edwards household recorded her kindness, gentility, and inspiration. She...