Lydia Maria Child (11 February 1802-20 October 1880), abolitionist and popular author, was born into a large family at Medford, Massachusetts. At twelve her mother died and she was sent to live with her married sister in Maine. She remained there until...

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 War. Lydia Maria Francis was born in Medford, Mass.,...

Lydia Maria Child ranks among the most influential of nineteenth-century American women writers. She was renowned in her day as a tireless crusader for truth and justice and a champion of excluded groups in American society--especially Indians, slaves,...

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 of Religious Ideas (1855), which offered a history of the world's...

Lydia Maria Child (February 11 1802 – July 7 1880) was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, opponent of American expansionism, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist. She is perhaps most remembered for her poem, Over the...

The author argues the 19th-century bestseller "The American Frugal Housewife," by Lydia Maria Child, provides much more than practical advice on housekeeping to women. It is a radical feminist text that examines democracy and capitalism. Several years ago, when just engaged to my...

How to write a feminist biography? Carolyn Karcher's grand account of the life and work of Lydia Maria Child stands as one of the best recent answers to the question, largely because the biographer is not afraid to allow her subject to raise...

With The First Woman in the Republic, Karcher published the first extensive analytical biography of Child. In the following chapter from this work, Karcher documents the cultural position of Child's Juvenile Miscellany, including its appeal to both young and adult readers and the cultural currents that shaped the periodical's direction.

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 biographical sketches in the books reviewed.

In the biographical sketch below, Thorp delineates the "dichotomy of mind" that prompted Child to alternate between apparently apolitical works and her highly political antislavery tracts.