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

by Carolyn L. Karcher

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism

832 pages, Hardcover

First published November 4, 1994

About the author

Carolyn L. Karcher is the author of The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child and the editor of Tourgee's novel Bricks Without Straw.

Reviews

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

600 pages, 21 chapters plus
afterword 8 pages
Notes 140 pages
works of L. Child, 16 p.
index 32 p.

The entire book is more than I have time for, and in some cases more than I want to know about Child and her times. But the parts I settled on were extraordinary in providing a sense of being a woman, an abolitionist, and a feminist in those times.

a few notes
p.
322 oppression of women by violence, 'gallantry', intellectual condescension
323 marriage is dissolving; Lydia now speaking out publicly about women's rights lst time
women as sex objects in writings: L. critical of Emerson's sexism, Milton (Paradise Lost) hierarchy of God, Men, Women

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this biography. It is largely organized around Child's writing which demonstrates her cultural significance while telling the story of her life and what motivated her. If you are interested in 19th century activism and reform, you will enjoy this.

[Amy Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really don't know which one I'm more in love with right now, Lydia Maria Child or Harriet Beecher Stowe.