The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child

by Carolyn L. Karcher

Book Overview

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,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822321637
• ISBN13: 9780822321637
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 832 Pages
• Weight: 3.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.8" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful accomplishment

This book is an incredible accomplishment and as the first reviewer wrote truly a labor of love. While I had heard of Lydia Maria Child prior to reading this book, I had no idea that she was such a prolific writer who addressed so many political, social and cultural issues. Karcher unearths Child's voluminous writings and describes them hand-in-hand with the events of Child's life against the backdrop of the nineteenth century. Unlike biographies of authors that ignore the writings and studies of written works that ignore the writer, I find this book a perfect marriage of english and history that so amazingly describes the entire life and work of this incredible woman and brings to life the nineteenth century. As I read it, I couldn't help regularly thinking "wow" both at Lydia Maria Child for accomplishing so much and at Carolyn Karcher for writing about her so thoughtfully and thoroughly. I'm truly amazed that someone could write such a work in one lifetime and I consider it one of best books I've ever read.

A labor of love

This is truly a labor of love: an 800-page, oversized biography of Lydia Maria Child, a woman who even at her death was mostly forgotten. Child was a prodigeous writer and social activist - staunch abolitionist, Indian advocate, feminist - who wrote ceaselessly for her causes (her bibliography contains hundreds of items). Karcher explores Child's life in great depth and with loving care. Anyone even remotely interested in Child or the world she inhabited will find this book useful and enjoyable.