Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lydia Maria Child
-
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
.
"Lydia Maria Child" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Lydia_Maria_Child_engraving.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
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...
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.
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...
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.