Lydia Maria Child
Description
Lydia Maria Child (née Francis; February 11, 1802 – October 20, 1880) was an American abolitionist, feminist, Native American rights activist, novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism. Her journals, both fiction and domestic manuals, reached wide audiences from the 1820s through the 1850s. At times she shocked her audience as she tried to take on issues of both male dominance and white supremacy in some of her stories. Despite these challenges, Child may be most remembered for her poem "Over the River and Through the Wood". Her grandparents' house, which she wrote about visiting, was restored by Tufts University in 1976 and stands near the Mystic River on South Street, in Medford, Massachusetts.
Books
Frugal housewife
Married at 25 to a charming dreamer whose irresponsible behavior quickly depleted their meager earnings, Mrs. Childs compiled this book (based, very likely, on personal experience) for women of less than moderate means.
The family nurse
A practical guide to caring for the sick, invalid and elderly in the home, and the last of several, popular domestic manuals published by Child.
An appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans
Published in Boston in 1833, Lydia Maria Child's Appeal provided the abolitionist movement with its first full-scale analysis of race and slavery. Indeed, so comprehensive was its scope, surveying the institution from historical, political, economic, legal, racial, and moral perspectives, that no other antislavery writer ever attempted to duplicate Child's achievement. The Appeal not only denounced slavery in the South but condemned racial prejudice in the free North and refuted racist ideology as a whole. Child's treatise anticipated twentieth-century inquiries into the African origins of European and American culture as well as current arguments against school and job discrimination based on race. This new edition - the first oriented toward the classroom - is enhanced by Carolyn L. Karcher's illuminating introduction. Included is a chronology of Child's life and a list of books for further reading.
Boy's Thanksgiving Day
An illustrated version of the well-known text describing the joys of a Thanksgiving visit to grandmother's house.