Lydia Maria Child

11 February 1802 - 20 October 1880

Standard Name: Child, Lydia Maria

Birth Name: Lydia Maria Francis

Pseudonym: An American

Married Name: Lydia Maria Child

Pseudonym: The Author of Hobomok

Indexed Name: Mrs D. L. Child

Indexed Name: L. Maria Child

Used Form: L. Maria Child

Used Form: Mrs Child

LMC , nineteenth-century American woman of letters, published novels, children's books, domestic-advice books, newspaper articles and columns in the form of letters, as well as biography, controversial works against slavery, a remarkable history of world religions, and an equally ground-breaking anthology and compendium for freed slaves designed to inculcate black pride. She also worked as editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and other papers, and edited the fictionalised autobiography of Harriet Jacobs .

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Friends, Associates	Sojourner Truth	ST 's vocation brought her into contact with many eminent people, from Abraham Lincoln downwards. She shared a platform with Frederick Douglass on a famous occasion when she challenged his faith by demanding whether God...
Friends, Associates	Frances Power Cobbe	FPC 's time at Red Lodge House brought her into contact with other reformers, feminists, and abolitionists from Britain and the USA, including Sarah Parker Remond , and Samuel May . After the execution of...
Friends, Associates	Margaret Fuller	Through her Conversations MF both benefited and formed friendships with a number of remarkable women: Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Lydia Maria Child , and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody . Marshall, Megan. “Let Them Be Sea-Captains”. London Review of Books, No. 22, pp. 16 -18. 16 She also encouraged the literary ambitions...
Friends, Associates	Margaret Fuller	MF 's circle of friends and associates included many of the of the pre-eminent thinkers and writers of her day. She maintained a vision of friendship that demanded total loyalty and sought integrity, sensitivity, and...
Friends, Associates	Harriet Jacobs	HJ 's friendships with white people have left traces behind them; her friendships with black people have not. When she arrived in Rochester in 1849, HJ stayed briefly with Amy Post , a white Quaker...
Friends, Associates	Elizabeth Stuart Phelps	Well known and much admired in her lifetime, ESP enjoyed friendships with many important literary figures, including publisher James Fields (who has been described as Christ-like in sympathy and kindness) Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. Chapters From a Life. Houghton, Mifflin, 1897. 145 and his wife...
Friends, Associates	Marion Reid	Despite the restrictions placed on Americans at the Convention, it is likely that MR met there Lucretia Mott and Lydia Child . Helsinger, Elizabeth K., Robin Lauterbach Sheets, and William Veeder. The Woman Question. Garland, 1983. 1: 14 McFadden, Margaret. Golden Cables of Sympathy. University of Kentucky Press, 1999. 20 Nearly fifty years later, through Caroline Ashurst Biggs (editor of...
Intertextuality and Influence	Frances Wright	According to scholar Kenneth Walter Cameron , the influence of this work reached Lydia Maria Child , and through her to Emerson and perhaps Thoreau . Cameron, Kenneth Walter, and Lydia Maria Child. “Genesis and Backgrounds of Mrs. Child’s Philothea”. Philothea, Trancendental Books, 1975, pp. 1 - 4. 2-3 Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online.
Literary responses	Harriet Beecher Stowe	Lydia Maria Child shared the popular opinion in finding this book tedious. Bret Harte described it as more provincial than its characters. Hedrick, Joan. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. Oxford University Press, 1994. 344, 346, 347
Literary responses	Frances Power Cobbe	The preface was admired by George Eliot , and Lydia Maria Child called it a truly manly production: thus we are obliged to compliment the superior sex when we seek to praise our own. Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press, 2004. 131
Literary responses	Margaret Fuller	Lydia Maria Child reviewed Woman in the Nineteenth Century positively when it came out. The anonymous reviewer for the Ladies' National Magazine, however, took issue with Fuller's systemic criticism and re-asserted the difference of...
Publishing	Harriet Jacobs	When Jacobs approached Phillips and Sampson , publishers, they would take her book only with a preface from someone known to the public, either Harriet Beecher Stowe or Nathaniel Willis . Her second choice, Thayer and Eldridge
Publishing	Harriet Jacobs	Lydia Maria Child signed the contract for HJ 's book with her publishers, Thayer and Eldridge , and had the copyright taken out in her name. She told Jacobs, Under the circumstances your name could...
Reception	Lady Rachel Russell	LRR seems to have set a low value on her personal, religious writings. To a relation who apparently hoped to read them, she wrote, Pray, my Lord, be not in care about my writings. Indeed...
Textual Production	Sojourner Truth	This report appeared in Lydia Maria Child 's National Anti-Slavery Standard, just before Truth adopted the name under which she became famous.

Timeline

8 September 1836

The Transcendental Club (also known as the Hedge Club and the Symposium ) was formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts; it brought together various thinkers who were at the forefront of Transcendentalism.

1864

Famous Girls who have become Illustrious Women: Forming Models for Imitation by the Young Women of England, a very popular book of biographical sketches by John M. Darton , was published.