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

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

Carolyn L. Karcher, Carolyn L. Karcher, Karcher. Duke University Press, $99.95 (832pp) ISBN 978-0-8223-1485-1

Famous during her lifetime, Child (1802-1880) had a remarkable career as author and social reformer. Karcher (Shadow Over the Promised Land) has prodigiously researched 19th-century life in America to place her subject in historical context for this definitive biography. Child wrote novels (Hobomok), women's advice books (The Frugal Housewife) and journalism. She also founded a children's magazine. She sacrificed a flourishing literary career to devote herself to the abolitionist cause, publishing the influential antislavery text, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called African (1833), as well as editing an abolitionist newspaper. Although she and her husband, David, were united in social activism, their marriage lacked passion, and Child expressed her sexual feelings through her fiction, according to Karcher. She also agitated for the rights of Native Americans and women. Her seemingly secure reputation was erased, notes the author, by the ``backlash against Reconstruction.'' This work should bring her recognition again. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)