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Summary
Summary
For half a century Lydia Maria Child was a household name in the United States. Hardly a sphere of nineteenth-century life can be found in which Lydia Maria Child did not figure prominently as a pathbreaker. Although best known today for having edited Harriet A. Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , she pioneered almost every department of nineteenth-century American letters--the historical novel, the short story, children's literature, the domestic advice book, women's history, antislavery fiction, journalism, and the literature of aging. Offering a panoramic view of a nation and culture in flux, this innovative cultural biography (originally published by Duke University Press in 1994) recreates the world as well as the life of a major nineteenth-figure whose career as a writer and social reformer encompassed issues central to American history.
Author Notes
Carolyn L. Karcher is Professor of English, American Studies, and Women's Studies at Temple University.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Famous during her lifetime, Child (1802-1880) had a remarkable career as author and social reformer. Karcher (Shadow Over the Promised Land) has prodigiously researched 19th-century life in America to place her subject in historical context for this definitive biography. Child wrote novels (Hobomok), women's advice books (The Frugal Housewife) and journalism. She also founded a children's magazine. She sacrificed a flourishing literary career to devote herself to the abolitionist cause, publishing the influential antislavery text, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called African (1833), as well as editing an abolitionist newspaper. Although she and her husband, David, were united in social activism, their marriage lacked passion, and Child expressed her sexual feelings through her fiction, according to Karcher. She also agitated for the rights of Native Americans and women. Her seemingly secure reputation was erased, notes the author, by the ``backlash against Reconstruction.'' This work should bring her recognition again. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A close look at a 19th-century author and abolitionist that integrates her personal life, her work, and the eventful period in US history during which she lived. Karcher (English, American Studies, Women's Studies/Temple Univ.; Shadow Over the Promised Land, not reviewed) is a staunch advocate of her subject, tracing the ``trajectory'' of Child's life from her earliest fiction through her anti-slavery work and later advocacy of women's and Indian's rights. Child (180280), who entered the literary limelight with Hobomok, a novel sympathetic to Indians and hostile to patriarchy, compounded her success by founding Juvenile Miscellany, a hugely popular children's magazine. But love came to Child at a high price: Her husband, newspaper editor David Lee Child, was a terrible businessman who accumulated debts faster than she could cover them. Karcher, clearly appalled by a woman ``abasing herself to the husband responsible for sabotaging her career,'' indicates that Child's early opposition to gender equality could have been rooted in devotion to her marriage. Need for cash drove her to write on domestic economy, but after an 1830 meeting with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, her life and writings acquired a greater goal. With the publication of her first major work on slavery, Child's formerly adoring public became incensed, the Juvenile Miscellany folded, and her activities as an anti- slavery activist put her in danger (as Karcher's comments on mob violence effectively indicate). Karcher is at her best when Child herself is a lion; less impressive are the occasional psychological speculations (e.g., on the possible connection in Child's mind between abolitionist John Brown and her parents) and excuses for Child not meeting late-20th-century standards for political correctness (e.g., depression and housework kept her from fighting the Fugitive Slave Law). This valuable portrait of a complex and talented woman may be most notable for indicating the extent to which she was of- -rather than ahead of--her time. (10 b&w photos, not seen)
Booklist Review
Child, rescued from obscurity over the past decade and a half largely by publication of the Meltzer/Holland edition of her letters (1980, 1982) and of Deborah Clifford's scholarly biography, Crusader for Freedom (1992), had been remembered in the preceding century primarily for her children's Thanksgiving song ("Over the river and through the wood") and later as editor of the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs (1861). Karcher's "cultural biography" explores the intersection between Child's life and her work, blending "the close reading necessary to establish the significance of Child's fiction and cultural criticism" with attention to "central problems in nineteenth-century American culture that she worked out in her life and writings: the creation of a national literature; the redefinition of womanhood; the extension of the country's egalitarian creed to disfranchised groups; and the quest for a faith free of sectarian dogmatism." Volume 1 takes Child from a lonely Massachusetts childhood through literary accomplishments and antislavery agitation to age 45 (1847). Not an essential acquisition but should be of interest to larger U.S. literature, U.S. history, and women's studies collections. ~--Mary Carroll
Choice Review
Karcher's authoritative biography argues compellingly that Lydia Maria Child, 19th-century reformer, novelist, and author of works for housewives and children, merits serious literary study. Karcher (Temple Univ.) demonstrates how Child, although aware of society's stress points, was able to imagine creative alternatives to the violence, racism, religious intolerance, and patriarchy that seemed inevitable to most. Punished for her presumption in embracing interracial marriage, the equality of religions, and the empowerment of women, she faced proscription, except in radical circles, throughout her lifetime. Even in the 20th century, scholars have had difficulty fitting her into standard paradigms in literature or history. Karcher's exhaustive scholarship in primary and secondary sources places Child firmly within her culture, analyzes all her writings, and demonstrates the uniqueness of her vision by comparing her work to contemporary writers struggling with the same themes. Much more thorough and psychologically compelling that Deborah Clifford's Crusade for Freedom (CH, Dec'92), this should become the standard biography of a noteworthy writer and belongs in all academic libraries. Illustrations, chronology, and a complete list of Child's works. All levels. P. F. Field; Ohio University
Library Journal Review
New Englander Child (1802-80) was foremost among social activists of the 19th century who, while working for rights denied to them, also fought against the genocide of the Indian and the enslavement of the African American. As a writer of nonfiction and fiction (she predated James Fenimore Cooper with her first historical novel) and as an abolitionist and crusader for human rights and religious tolerance, she was one of the most controversial and even heralded women of her time. Unlike the work of some 19th-century activists, her writings are in many cases still relevant today, leaving the question of how Child has simply disappeared from the literary and historical textbooks. Karcher (English, Temple Univ.) details Child's life in a thoroughly researched manner that emphasizes Child's own writings. It is not geared to casual reading but is recommended for all large public and academic libraries as well as women's studies collections. A meticulous study of a fascinating woman.-Kathrine Gillen, Luke Air Force Base Lib., Ariz. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Illustrations |
Preface and Acknowledgments |
Chronology |
Abbreviations |
Prologue: A Passion for Books |
1 The Author of Hobomok |
2 Rebels and "Rivals": Self Portraits of a Conflicted Young Artist |
3 The Juvenile Miscellany: The Creation of an American Children's Literature |
4 A Marriage of True Minds: Espousing the Indian Cause |
5 Blighted Prospects: Indian Fiction and Domestic Reality |
6 The Frugal Housewife: Financial Worries and Domestic Advice |
7 Children's Literature and Antislavery: Conservative Medium, Radical Message |
8 "The First Woman in the Republic": An Antislavery Baptism |
9 An Antislavery Marriage: Careers at Cross Purposes |
10 The Conditions of Women: Double Binds, Unresolved Conflicts |
11 Schisms, Personal and Political |
12 The National Anti-Slavery Standard: Family Newspaper or Factional Organ? |
13 Letters from New York: The Invention of a New Literary Genre |
14 Sexuality and Marriage in Fact and Fiction |
15 The Progress of Religious Ideas: A "Pilgrimage of Pennance" |
16 Autumnal Leaves: Reconsecrated Partnerships, Personal and Political |
17 The Example of John Brown |
18 Child's Civil War |
19 Visions of a Reconstructed America: The Freedmen's Book and A Romance of the Republic |
20 A Radical Old Age |
21 Aspirations of the World |
Afterword |
Notes |
Works of Lydia Maria Child |
Index |