These memoirs by the wife of a noted Supreme Court justice, John Marshall Harlan, first appeared last summer in the Journal of Supreme Court History
and gained considerable attention thanks to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's enthusiastic support. Now they are being made available in a popular edition complete with foreword by Ginsburg (not seen by PW) and extensive notes by Przybyszewski. Justice Harlan, though a former slave-holder, is remembered for his lone and eloquent dissent in Plessy
v. Ferguson, the case that established the doctrine of "separate but equal." His wife's recollections of her married life shed considerable light on the complexities inherent in race relations in America and help explain such an apparent contradiction. Mrs. Harlan was a conventional woman; she shared the unreflecting assumptions of white superiority and wifely subordination common to her class. Indeed her decision, at 50, to visit Italy without her husband's express permission was so uncharacteristic that it went down in family annals as "Mother's Revolt," while her portraits of the slaves in her father-in-law's household, though well intentioned, will produce nothing but deep embarrassment in the contemporary reader. Nevertheless, she stood squarely behind her husband's dissent. No visionary, Malvina Harlan was a thoroughly nice woman who behaved as she knew she should. Her journals will most interest students of the period. Photos not seen by PW. (May)
Forecast:Clearly, Modern Library is counting on the clout of Justice Ginsburg's name to help sell the book, as the announced first printing of 75,000 copies attests.
