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

by Carolyn L Karcher

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, the domestic advice book, women’s history, antislavery fiction, journalism, and the literature of aging. Offering a panoramic view of a nation and culture in flux, this innovative cultural biography (originally published by Duke University Press in 1994) recreates the world as well as the life of a major nineteenth-figure whose career as a writer and social reformer encompassed issues central to American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822321637
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	03/02/1998
Series:	New Americanists
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	832
Product dimensions:	6.84(w) x 9.96(h) x 1.51(d)

About the Author

Carolyn L. Karcher is Professor of English, American Studies, and Women’s Studies at Temple University.

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix

Preface and Acknowledgments xi

Chronology xix

Abbreviations xxvi

Prologue: A Passion for Books 1

1. The Author of Hobomok 16

2. Rebels and "Rivals": Self Portraits of a Conflicted Young Artist 38

3. The Juvenile Miscellany: The Creation of an American Children's Literature 57

4. A Marriage of True Minds: Espousing the Indian Cause 80

5. Blighted Prospects: Indian Fiction and Domestic Reality 101

6. The Frugal Housewife: Financial Worries and Domestic Advice 126

7. Children's Literature and Antislavery: Conservative Medium, Radical Message 151

8. "The First Woman in the Republic": An Antislavery Baptism 173

9. An Antislavery Marriage: Careers at Cross Purposes 195

10. The Conditions of Women: Double Binds, Unresolved Conflicts 214

11. Schisms, Personal and Political 249

12. The National Anti-Slavery Standard: Family Newspaper or Factional Organ? 267

13. Letters from New York: The Invention of a New Literary Genre 295

14. Sexuality and Marriage in Fact and Fiction 320

15. The Progress of Religious Ideas: A "Pilgrimage of Pennance" 356

16. Autumnal Leaves: Reconsecrated Partnerships, Personal and Political 384

17. The Example of John Brown 416

18. Child's Civil War 443

19. Visions of a Reconstructed America: The Freedmen's Book and A Romance of the Republic 487

20. A Radical Old Age 532

21. Aspirations of the World 573

Afterword 608

Notes 617

Works of Lydia Maria Child 757

Index 773

Editorial Reviews

Karcher’s biography of Child is a monumentally thorough scholarly work.

Women's Review of Books

Karcher convincingly argues that Child deserves recognition as one of the handful of leading women intellectuals of her day: indeed, of leading intellectuals of either sex.

London Review of Books

"A monumental scholarly achievement."—Joan Hedrick, author of Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life


"The definitive biography of a major figure in American literary and political history.—Richard Slotkin, author of Gunfighter Nation


"This is a magnificent book. Child’s character emerges as a model for what a woman can be."—Jane Tompkins, author of West of Everything

From the Publisher

Lydia Maria Child’s rich and expansive life has finally been accorded the voluminous treatment it deserves.

American Historical Review

Child’s was a ‘household name’ during her lifetime, Carolyn Karcher writes, . . . yet since then her works and influence have been all but ‘erased from history.’ Ms. Karcher hopes to restore that reputation and to familiarize the modern reader with Child’s writings through a literary biography based on ‘extensive quotation and detailed literary analysis.’ Ms. Karcher’s goal is an admirable one; Child’s importance and influence should be reasserted.

New York Times Book Review

Readers who come to this large volume expecting only the biography of a single figure, underestimate what the book offers. To be sure, The First Woman in the Republic will stand for many years as the definitive biography of Child. More than that, though, it is a cultural biography of an entire century....For students and scholars of American literature, American history, and American cultural studies, this is a volume to be cherished for its passion and its honesty. -- African American Review

Annette Kolodny

Karcher establishes the intellectual stature of one of the nineteenth century's most overlooked figures. -- American Literature

Dana D. Nelson

Famous during her lifetime, Child (1802-1880) had a remarkable career as author and social reformer. Karcher (Shadow Over the Promised Land) has prodigiously researched 19th-century life in America to place her subject in historical context for this definitive biography. Child wrote novels (Hobomok), women's advice books (The Frugal Housewife) and journalism. She also founded a children's magazine. She sacrificed a flourishing literary career to devote herself to the abolitionist cause, publishing the influential antislavery text, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called African (1833), as well as editing an abolitionist newspaper. Although she and her husband, David, were united in social activism, their marriage lacked passion, and Child expressed her sexual feelings through her fiction, according to Karcher. She also agitated for the rights of Native Americans and women. Her seemingly secure reputation was erased, notes the author, by the ``backlash against Reconstruction.'' This work should bring her recognition again. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

New Englander Child (1802-80) was foremost among social activists of the 19th century who, while working for rights denied to them, also fought against the genocide of the Indian and the enslavement of the African American. As a writer of nonfiction and fiction (she predated James Fenimore Cooper with her first historical novel) and as an abolitionist and crusader for human rights and religious tolerance, she was one of the most controversial and even heralded women of her time. Unlike the work of some 19th-century activists, her writings are in many cases still relevant today, leaving the question of how Child has simply disappeared from the literary and historical textbooks. Karcher (English, Temple Univ.) details Child's life in a thoroughly researched manner that emphasizes Child's own writings. It is not geared to casual reading but is recommended for all large public and academic libraries as well as women's studies collections. A meticulous study of a fascinating woman.-Kathrine Gillen, Luke Air Force Base Lib., Ariz.

Library Journal

[O]ne of the strengths of this extremely detailed, well-researched, and . . . thought-provoking biography is the way in which the author delineates the interrelationships between Child's varied causes. . . . The First Woman in the Republic will undoubtedly become the definitive biography of Child.

Historical Association

In what will be the definitive biography for years to come, Carolyn Karcher has written an exhaustive study of a formidable nineteenth century figure.

Magills Literary Annual

Karcher's study represents a significant scholarly achievement. It not only offers a complex and sophisticated portrayal of a woman struggling to contend with `an unsatisfying marriage, unfulfilled sexual desires, domestic drudgery, and thwarted professional ambitions' and a reformer whose life's work was devoted to the drive for equality in all spheres, but also suggests new ways of examining American society's most tumultuous period of growth and change.

Journal of American Studies

Where Karcher scores, as her subtitle indicates, is as a cultural biographer. . . . The biography benefits from archival materials, an extensive knowledge of the literature of anti-slavery, Reconstruction, and Indian removal, and a broad knowledge of American politics and literature to boot. . . . The chapters on children's literature and anti-slavery, The National Anti-Slavery Standard, John Brown, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, are particularly impressive. Karcher's literary judgements are also often acute. She brings out Child's supreme grasp of literary strategy, her sharp powers of persuasion, and her accurate sense of her audience.

Slavery and Abolition

Lydia Maria Child was a remarkable woman, and Carolyn Karcher's full account of her life, her society, her writings, and actions to change the ills of society is an extraordinary book. . . . [I]n Karcher's biography Child's life, writings, and social and political activities have received their fullest, most interesting scholarly account.

Sciel

Perhaps Karcher's most important contribution is her prodigious research-other scholars now have an understanding of the depth and volume of Child's writing. Each of Lydia Maria Child's causes-Indian removal, women's rights, abolition, and even respect for the elderly-is deserving of further analysis. Taken together, they reveal Child, and Karcher, to be tireless, insightful, and forward-thinking.

American Studies

Karcher [has] extraordinary skills as both historian and literary critic.

Race Traitor

Carolyn Karcher is to be commended for the overall fine quality of her research and writing. She demonstrates an impressive command of primary and secondary literature and does a thorough job reviewing and analyzing al of Child's important works, a challenging proposition given their number, length, and variety. She does an equally fine job placing this remarkable woman in the context of her era. . . . [A]fter reading this book, one cannot help but share Karcher's belief that Child is `an exceptionally rewarding subject.

Biography

By probing Child's literary innovations, her radical social vision and activism, and the response of the intellectual and political world of nineteenth-century New England to her activity, Karcher adds a vital dimension to scholarship of this period. . . . Karcher's recreation of the rich cultural milieu of Child's era is sure-footed and copious. . . .

Karcher makes a powerful case for the resurrection of interest in Child.

Boston Book Review

As biography, Karcher's work extends the genre admirably to place a life in its historical and literary contexts. Her consistent sensitivity to matters of gender underlies the necessity of applying a feminist analysis to a writer like Child.

New England Quarterly

Weaving together textual analysis and biographical narrative, Karcher maps the relationship between Child's professional and personal lives, her marriage and her career. Simultaneously, she offers us a lens through which we can glimpse a rapidly changing nation.

Jour of Intl Law and Com

Much of Karcher's success in portraying Child's character comes from giving serious attention to Child's total output rather than concentrating narrowly on her better known antislavery work and her descriptions of urban life. . . . Taken altogether, Karcher gives us a Child that earlier biographers only skimmed because they failed to interweave the writer with the reformer.

Albert Revi

One only has to read this cultural biography . . . to appreciate how appropriate Karcher's conscientious recordings of Child's life and work actually are. . . . Works such as Karcher's offer an invaluable service to scholars, teachers, and students interested in broadening their understanding of American literature and culture and the significant role that women played in developing these arenas. . . . The First Woman in the Republic is a book that has much to offer and much to teach, not only about a major literary figure, but about the culture in which she lived and wrote. . . . Karcher's biography compels one to give Child another look, to acknowledge her status as a major American writer, and to factor her in when creating the next syllabus for a nineteenth-century American literature class.

Amer

Karcher's Herculean research and eloquent writing will help propel the recanonization of Child that has only begun.

Philip Gould