Lydia Maria Child

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Standard Name: Child, Lydia Maria
Birth Name: Lydia Maria Francis
Pseudonym: An American
Married Name: Lydia Maria Child
Pseudonym: The Author of Hobomok
Indexed Name: Mrs D. L. Child
Indexed Name: L. Maria Child
Used Form: L. Maria Child
Used Form: Mrs Child
LMC , nineteenth-century American woman of letters, published novels, children's books, domestic-advice books, newspaper articles and columns in the form of letters, as well as biography, controversial works against slavery, a remarkable history of world religions, and an equally ground-breaking anthology and compendium for freed slaves designed to inculcate black pride. She also worked as editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and other papers, and edited the fictionalised autobiography of Harriet Jacobs .
Head-and-shoulders engraving of Lydia Maria Child in her later age. She is wearing a buttoned dress with lacy collar and a cap. Her straight hair is parted in the middle and coiled over her ears.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Sojourner Truth
ST 's vocation brought her into contact with many eminent people, from Abraham Lincoln downwards. She shared a platform with Frederick Douglass on a famous occasion when she challenged his faith by demanding whether God...
Friends, Associates Marion Reid
Despite the restrictions placed on Americans at the Convention, it is likely that MR met there Lucretia Mott and Lydia Child .
Helsinger, Elizabeth K. et al. The Woman Question. Garland, 1983.
1: 14
McFadden, Margaret. Golden Cables of Sympathy. University of Kentucky Press, 1999.
20
Nearly fifty years later, through Caroline Ashurst Biggs (editor of...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Well known and much admired in her lifetime, ESP enjoyed friendships with many important literary figures, including publisher James Fields (who has been described as Christ-like in sympathy and kindness)
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. Chapters From a Life. Houghton, Mifflin, 1897.
145
and his wife...
Friends, Associates Harriet Jacobs
HJ 's friendships with white people have left traces behind them; her friendships with black people have not. When she arrived in Rochester in 1849, HJ stayed briefly with Amy Post , a white Quaker...
Friends, Associates Frances Power Cobbe
FPC 's time at Red Lodge House brought her into contact with other reformers, feminists, and abolitionists from Britain and the USA, including Sarah Parker Remond , and Samuel May . After the execution of...
Friends, Associates Margaret Fuller
Through her Conversations MF both benefited and formed friendships with a number of remarkable women: Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Lydia Maria Child , and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody .
Marshall, Megan. “Let Them Be Sea-Captains”. London Review of Books, Vol.
29
, No. 22, 15 Nov. 2007, pp. 16-18.
16
She also encouraged the literary ambitions...
Friends, Associates Margaret Fuller
MF 's circle of friends and associates included many of the of the pre-eminent thinkers and writers of her day. She maintained a vision of friendship that demanded total loyalty and sought integrity, sensitivity, and...
Intertextuality and Influence Frances Wright
According to scholar Kenneth Walter Cameron , the influence of this work reached Lydia Maria Child , and through her to Emerson and perhaps Thoreau .
Cameron, Kenneth Walter, and Lydia Maria Child. “Genesis and Backgrounds of Mrs. Childs PhilotheaPhilothea, Trancendental Books, 1975, pp. 1-4.
2-3
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Literary responses Margaret Fuller
Lydia Maria Child reviewed Woman in the Nineteenth Century positively when it came out. The anonymous reviewer for the Ladies' National Magazine, however, took issue with Fuller's systemic criticism and re-asserted the difference of...
Literary responses Harriet Beecher Stowe
Lydia Maria Child shared the popular opinion in finding this book tedious. Bret Harte described it as more provincial than its characters.
Hedrick, Joan. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. Oxford University Press, 1994.
344, 346, 347
Literary responses Frances Power Cobbe
The preface was admired by George Eliot , and Lydia Maria Child called it a truly manly production: thus we are obliged to compliment the superior sex when we seek to praise our own.
qtd. in
Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press, 2004.
131
Publishing Harriet Jacobs
When Jacobs approached Phillips and Sampson , publishers, they would take her book only with a preface from someone known to the public, either Harriet Beecher Stowe or Nathaniel Willis . Her second choice, Thayer and Eldridge
Publishing Harriet Jacobs
Lydia Maria Child signed the contract for HJ 's book with her publishers, Thayer and Eldridge , and had the copyright taken out in her name. She told Jacobs, Under the circumstances your name could...
Reception Lady Rachel Russell
LRR seems to have set a low value on her personal, religious writings. To a relation who apparently hoped to read them, she wrote, Pray, my Lord, be not in care about my writings. Indeed...
Textual Production Sojourner Truth
This report appeared in Lydia Maria Child 's National Anti-Slavery Standard, just before Truth adopted the name under which she became famous.

Timeline

8 September 1836: The Transcendental Club (also known as the...

Writing climate item

8 September 1836

The Transcendental Club (also known as the Hedge Club and the Symposium ) was formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts; it brought together various thinkers who were at the forefront of Transcendentalism.
Geldard, Richard G., editor. The Essential Transcendentalists. Penguin, 2005.
68, 89
The Web of American Transcendentalism. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/index.html.
Oxford Reference. http://www.oxfordreference.com.

1864: Famous Girls who have become Illustrious...

Writing climate item

1864

Famous Girls who have become Illustrious Women: Forming Models for Imitation by the Young Women of England, a very popular book of biographical sketches by John M. Darton , was published.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

Texts

Child, Lydia Maria. A Romance of the Republic. Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
Child, Lydia Maria. An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans. Allen and Ticknor, 1833.
Child, Lydia Maria. Autumnal Leaves. C. S. Francis, 1857.
Cameron, Kenneth Walter, and Lydia Maria Child. “Genesis and Backgrounds of Mrs. Childs PhilotheaPhilothea, Trancendental Books, 1975, pp. 1-4.
Child, Lydia Maria. Hobomok. Cummings, Hilliard, 1824.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Editor Child, Lydia Maria, Printed for the author, 1861.
Whittier, John Greenleaf, and Lydia Maria Child. “Introduction”. Letters of Lydia Maria Child, Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969, p. v - xxv.
Child, Lydia Maria. Letters from New York. C. S. Francis; J. Munroe, 1843.
Child, Lydia Maria. Letters from New York: Second Series. C. S. Francis; J. H. Francis, 1845.
Child, Lydia Maria, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Letters of Lydia Maria Child. Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969.
Child, Lydia Maria. Philothea. Otis and Broaders, 1836.
Child, Lydia Maria. The Freedmen’s Book. Ticknor and Fields, 1865.
Child, Lydia Maria. The Frugal Housewife. Marsh and Capen; Carter and Hendee, 1829.
Child, Lydia Maria, editor. The Juvenile Miscellany. John Putnam.
Child, Lydia Maria. The Ladies Family Library. Carter and Hendee; J. Allen, 1835, 5 vols.
Child, Lydia Maria. The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages. C. S. Francis, 1855, 3 vols.
Child, Lydia Maria. The Rebels. Cummings and Hilliard, 1825.