Lydia Maria Child - by Lydia Moland (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was for a time one of America's most beloved authors, known for household manuals and children's poems, including the immortal "Over the River and Through the Wood." But in 1833, having converted to the abolitionist cause, Child published An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, the first book-length condemnation of slavery printed in the United States. Child's book created an immediate uproar and catapulted her into the life of an activist. Lydia Maria Child became one of the most consequential radicals of nineteenth-century America. In this biography of Child, Lydia Moland foregrounds Child's struggles of conscience and the meaning they held for her life-and, potentially, for ours. In her first career, Lydia Maria Child achieved what almost no woman in history had before-she was a self-sufficient female author. What, then, made her throw it all away to write An Appeal? The scandal of that book caused sales of her other books to plummet, polite society to cast her out, her beloved husband David to be jailed for libel, and the two rendered penniless. Yet Child soon drew untold numbers to the cause of abolition with her writings and her deeds. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Charles Sumner both credit her with their conversion. During the Civil War, the Union Army distributed her words to 300,000 troops to help weary soldiers justify their sacrifice. She spirited endangered abolitionists out of the country, protected activists from angry pro-slavery mobs with her own body, and helped Harriet Jacobs edit Jacobs's autobiography, the most influential slave narrative by a woman in American history. Moland's biography restores this brave and brilliant woman to her proper place in American history while showing how her example answers these urgent questions: When confronted by sanctioned evil or systematic injustice, how should a citizen live? What prompts moral change? When do we have a duty to disobey unjust laws? Child's story is one from the past with much to teach us about our present"--

Book Synopsis

Now in paperback, a compelling biography of Lydia Maria Child, one of nineteenth-century America's most courageous abolitionists.

By 1830, Lydia Maria Child had established herself as something almost unheard of in the American nineteenth century: a beloved and self-sufficient female author. Best known today for the immortal poem "Over the River and through the Wood," Child had become famous at an early age for spunky self-help books and charming children's stories. But in 1833, Child shocked her readers by publishing a scathing book-length argument against slavery in the United States--a book so radical in its commitment to abolition that friends abandoned her, patrons ostracized her, and her book sales plummeted. Yet Child soon drew untold numbers to the abolitionist cause, becoming one of the foremost authors and activists of her generation.

Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life tells the story of what brought Child to this moment and the extraordinary life she lived in response. Through Child's example, philosopher Lydia Moland asks questions as pressing and personal in our time as they were in Child's: What does it mean to change your life when the moral future of your country is at stake? When confronted by sanctioned evil and systematic injustice, how should a citizen live? Child's lifetime of bravery, conviction, humility, and determination provides a wealth of spirited guidance for political engagement today.

Review Quotes

"There are dozens of wonderful stories in this stew of a book. . . . Lydia Maria Child may or may not be 'truly living' in another world now, but in the pages of this book she is certainly alive, vibrant and inspiring."-- "The Nation"

"[Lydia Maria Child was] a remarkable woman who needs to be remembered as one of the nineteenth century's most influential Abolitionists. . . . A work of exemplary scholarship, Moland's definitive biography of Child is extremely well written and invites both an academic and general readership."-- "Booklist"

"Moland's highly readable biography depicts Child as a woman who approached abolitionism with a religious sense of duty. She may have abandoned her churchly faith, but she never gave up her pursuit of transcendent truth. This biography ought to restore Child's name to the pantheon of American reformers."-- "Christian Century"

"Moland provides a thorough, much-needed examination
of 19th-century American author and activist Lydia Maria Child. . . Moland's work provides valuable insight into this era and one of its greatest activists. Recommended."-- "Choice"

"Moland's biography is ambitious, but she does an exceptional job of establishing how Lydia Maria Child continues to speak to us two hundred years later."-- "The New England Quarterly"

"Throughout this thoughtful, soulful work, one feels the author alternately energized by seeing her own ideological proclivities echoed in her story, validated in finding the political predicaments of her own time anticipated, and disturbed when her 19th-century subject fails to fully embody 21st-century values... Like a salvage crew, Moland has scoured an important lost life from the fathomless depths of the past."-- "Los Angeles Review of Books"

"Readers will find this an affecting, emotional story."-- "Open Letters Review"

"Moland wants us to think hard about what we owe each other as citizens and human beings. In that sense she has produced a call to arms, an almanac for activists, as well as an ample, honest, and immensely readable book."-- "Wall Street Journal"

"After the 2016 presidential election. . . Moland discovered Child, a woman, she later learned, 'unwilling to accept the conventional wisdom of her time and unable to abide by its norms.' . . . Moland began to wonder, 'What could the example of her life teach me?' And 'does the world need another white hero?' Moland's Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life answers. . . . 'We might not need more white heroes, ' she writes, 'but I have come to believe that white Americans like me need more examples like hers.'"-- "New York Review of Books"

"Lydia Maria Child was one of the few great intellectual freedom fighters in nineteenth-century America. Moland's magisterial book takes us in and through Child's rich world and life in an exemplary manner. Don't miss this powerful text on a giant still so relevant to our bleak times."-- "Cornel West, author of 'Race Matters'"

"Moland's exuberant new biography gives us a Lydia Maria Child for the twenty-first century: a woman of fierce intelligence and astonishing ingenuity who never gave up the struggle to right the wrongs of enslavement and its legacy of race prejudice. Moland writes with a philosopher's instinct to question both herself and the evidence she uncovers, yielding an intimate portrait that is also a history of America's centuries-long reckoning with its founding principles."-- "Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'Margaret Fuller: A New American Life'"

"This is a biography on a mission. As Moland shows us, to discover Child is to discover ourselves, revealing the best and worst of who we are. Moland is at her best when eviscerating the flawed arguments of Child's opponents, arguments that, she reminds us, are ubiquitous even today. This is a brilliantly written book: stylish, witty, barbed yet sympathetic."-- "Laura Dassow Walls, author of 'Henry David Thoreau: A Life'"

About the Author

Lydia Moland is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Philosophy at Colby College. Her scholarship in German philosophy has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Academy in Berlin. Her work on Lydia Maria Child has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, in the Washington Post, in the Boston Globe, and on National Public Radio.