Lydia Child Summary

Child, Lydia Maria CHILD, LYDIA MARIA. Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) was a prolific author and a founder of the American abolitionist movement. Child wrote two books on religion: The Progress o... Read more

The popularity and moral force of the American author Lydia Maria Francis Child (1802-1880) contributed to the impact radical abolitionists exerted on the antislavery debate that preceded the Civil Wa... Read more

For half a century, from 1824, when Lydia Maria Child's daring novel of interracial marriage, Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times, greeted a shocked public, to the turbulent Reconstruction era, which found... Read more

In the following unsigned review of several of Child's books, the reviewer proclaims Child a leading American woman author, offers an overview of her works, and recaps in detail several of the ... Read more

In the following introduction to an 1883 edition of Child's letters, Whittier recalls both Child's professional achievements and her personal life, stressing in particular the marked res... Read more

In the following excerpt, Beach provides an overview of Child's life and career. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, few names in American literature were more conspicuous than ... Read more

In the essay below, Jeffrey examines the consonance between Child's nontraditional married and professional life and her relatively conservative opinion about women's social roles. Hi... Read more

In the essay that follows, which was originally published in 1987, Crapol examines Child's life and writings—especially her abolitionist An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Cal... Read more