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 ascending	Author name	Excerpt
Textual Production	Harriet Jacobs	It originally appeared under the pseudonym Linda Brent (which is given not on the title-page but as signature to the Preface by the Author). The fact that it was edited by Lydia Maria Child
Textual Production	Fanny Kemble	One critic argues that FK equated her life on the stage with a kind of slavery and therefore developed a keen sympathy for those in bondage; however, the actual conditions of slavery were probably quite...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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. 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. 131
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 <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Philothea</span&gt”;. Philothea, Trancendental Books, pp. 1-4. 2-3 Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
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. 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. et al. The Woman Question. Garland. 1: 14 McFadden, Margaret. Golden Cables of Sympathy. University of Kentucky Press. 20 Nearly fifty years later, through Caroline Ashurst Biggs (editor of...
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...

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.

Texts

Child, Lydia Maria. A Romance of the Republic. Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

Child, Lydia Maria. An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans. Allen and Ticknor, 1833.

Child, Lydia Maria. Autumnal Leaves. C. S. Francis, 1857.

Cameron, Kenneth Walter, and Lydia Maria Child. “Genesis and Backgrounds of Mrs. Child’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Philothea</span&gt”;. Philothea, Trancendental Books, 1975, pp. 1-4.

Child, Lydia Maria. Hobomok. Cummings, Hilliard, 1824.

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Editor Child, Lydia Maria, Printed for the author, 1861.

Whittier, John Greenleaf, and Lydia Maria Child. “Introduction”. Letters of Lydia Maria Child, Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969, p. v - xxv.

Child, Lydia Maria. Letters from New York. C. S. Francis; J. Munroe, 1843.

Child, Lydia Maria. Letters from New York: Second Series. C. S. Francis; J. H. Francis, 1845.

Child, Lydia Maria, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Letters of Lydia Maria Child. Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969.

Child, Lydia Maria. Philothea. Otis and Broaders, 1836.

Child, Lydia Maria. The Freedmen’s Book. Ticknor and Fields, 1865.

Child, Lydia Maria. The Frugal Housewife. Marsh and Capen; Carter and Hendee, 1829.

Child, Lydia Maria, editor. The Juvenile Miscellany. John Putnam.

Child, Lydia Maria. The Ladies Family Library. Carter and Hendee; J. Allen, 1835.

Child, Lydia Maria. The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages. C. S. Francis, 1855.

Child, Lydia Maria. The Rebels. Cummings and Hilliard, 1825.