Abigail Adams

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Standard Name: Adams, Abigail
Birth Name: Abigail Smith
Married Name: Abigail Adams
AA holds a secure place in history as a founding mother of the USA: wife of one President, mother of another. As a writer, too, her involvement from the margins in shaping the young republic gives an extra value to her letters—which, like those of many other eighteenth-century women, combine fluent and vivid prose with opinions eminently worth listening to. Her husband's career also made her a travel writer with an unrivalled vantage point for reporting on the cultural practices of France and of England.
Akers, Charles W. Abigail Adams: An American Woman. Little, Brown.
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Black and white photograph of a painting of Abigail Adams by Gilbert Stuart. She is seated in a chair draped in a blanket, with her hands clasped in her lap. She wears a simple dark dress with long sleeves trimmed with white ruffles, and a high light neckline, also ruffled. She has a sheer lace shawl wrapped around her shoulders and on her head a bonnet trimmed with lace and wrapped with ribbon tied in a bow. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Henry Brooks Adams
HBA was a great-grandson of the historic letter-writer Abigail Adams .
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah Josepha Hale
In turning the spotlight on American women she is not unmindful of their place in national life. Abigail Adams gets more than ten columns, a portrait, and generous quotation from her letters. She is a...
Friends, Associates Catharine Macaulay
With her husband CM lived a busy social life. She met Frances Sheridan after she had become a writer.
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press.
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She subscribed to Elizabeth Carter 's translation of Epictetus . Of her radical friends Thomas Hollis
Friends, Associates Catharine Macaulay
She later corresponded with Washington, as well as with Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren .
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press.
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Dedications Sarah Wentworth Morton
SWM 's The Virtues of Society. A Tale, Founded on Fact (originally intended to make part of Beacon Hill), was published in Boston, dedicated to Abigail Adams , as by the Author of...
Friends, Associates Sarah Wentworth Morton
She kept up throughout her lifetime her friendship with Abigail Adams , made her successive Dorchester homes a centre for younger writers and intellectuals including Robert Treat Payne, Jr , and wrote a verse thank-you...
Author summary Judith Sargent Murray
JSM , writing around and after the American War of Independence, produced poetry, plays, periodical essays, and a sentimental novel published in instalments. A recent biographer puts her closer to the centre of debate about...
Friends, Associates Judith Sargent Murray
JSM visited Abigail Adams soon after her second marriage.
Field, Vena Bernadette. Constantia: A Study of the Life and Works of Judith Sargent Murray, 1751-1820. University of Maine Press.
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Friends, Associates Mercy Otis Warren
Though MOW 's strongest friendships were probably with men (John Adams , Thomas Jefferson , and others), some friendships with women were very important to her, notably that with Abigail Adams . In her...
politics Mercy Otis Warren
MOW was a strong US nationalist before the War of Independence. Later she became, like her husband, an anti-Federalist: one of those who were not happy with the Constitution as drafted and sought amendments to...
Textual Production Mercy Otis Warren
Like so many of her contemporaries, MOW was an energetic and compelling letter-writer. She corresponded with an unidentified Dr Betsey on the topic of women's education. Her many letters to Abigail Adams include one of...
Textual Features Susanna Wright
It argues (before such arguments had been put forward in America by Abigail Adams , Judith Sargent Murray , or Mercy Otis Warren , but drawing on beliefs current among Quakers since their mid-seventeenth-century origins)...

Timeline

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Texts

Adams, Abigail, and John Adams. My Dearest Friend Letters of Abigail and John Adams. Editors Hogan, Margaret A. and James C. Taylor, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.