Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817-1880 (review)

268CIVIL WAR HISTORY agreements with the conclusions reached. Pressly's introduction should be read bothbefore and afterperusingthe otheressays, as it offers both an intriguing guide to what is to come and a useful summary of where one has been. One cannot expect in multiauthored essays the internal consistency of argument or conclusion in a scholarly monograph. Newness and challenge can be expected. This volume contains no reprise ofearlierworks; the authors challenge each other as well as other scholars of the antebellum period. David E. Meerse State University College, Fredonia Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817-1880. Edited by Milton Meltzer and Patricia Holland. Associate editor, Francine Krasno. (Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1982. Pp. xviii, 583. $35.00.) One of nineteenth-century America's most important women of letters and reformers was Lydia Maria Child. In a career spanning over sixty years she authored many books on such diverse topics as household management (The Frugal Housewife, 1829), world religions (Progress of Religious Ideas, 1855), and slavery (An Appeal in Favor of that Chss of Americans Called Africans, 1833). She was also the founder and editor of Juvenile MisceUany and editor of the National Anti-Shvery Standard. Throughout her life, Child was a popular and influential author ; her writings on behalf of the slave brought people like Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner into the antislavery movement. She was an early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison, believing that not only must slavery be abolished, but that racism must also be eliminated. Although she broke with organized antislavery in 1843, she continued to work for abolition on an individual basis. Child's published works reveal only a part of her ideas and character. Her letters round out the picture of this remarkable person. These missives were considered so significant and relèvent that two years afterher death in 1880, they were edited by Harriet Sewall and published under the title, Letters of Lydia Maria Child. In 1980, the entire body of her correspondence was published on microfiche as The Collected Correspondence of Lydia Maria Child, 1817-1880. From that comprehensive work of 2,604 letters, Milton Meltzer and Patricia Holland selected over four hundred for this volume. They chose ones they felt were "most revealing of Child's character and times in which she lived" (p. xv). Child corresponded with many of the well-known figures of her day, including Ellis G. Loring, Maria Weston Chapman, and Lucretia Mott. Not only did she discuss the significant political and social issues of the time, but she also had a keen interest in the arts. Child often wrote about the concerns of her daily life—her financial affairs, household managment , and her family. The depression and loneliness she sometimes felt BOOK REVIEWS269 comes through in these letters. Yet, Child frequently displayed her sense of humor and keen wit. The editors selected the letters for this volume well, and they did an exemplary job in the editing process. Many portions of the letters were wisely excluded to avoid repetition. Child's spelling, abbreviations, italicizations , and punctuation have been retained, to give the reader a text as close to the original as possible. They have also provided editorial notes, a chronology, and a preface briefly summarizing Child's career and ideas. The letters are arranged in chronological order and placed in chapters covering several years at a time. Each chapter begins with biographical information on Child corresponding to the time and letters under consideration. Preceding a letter or group of letters, the editors offer brief explanations relating to the correspondence. Footnotes appear throughout the volume, providing additional information on the letters. Although no letters to Child were included (many are no longer extant), judicious use of relevant portions of the remaining ones is made in the commentary. The editors noted where the original text of each document is located. Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817-1880 is an excellent example of how such document collections should be edited. This is a beautifully executed book, giving many scholars access to the correspondence of an influential American woman. It can be recommended to students of nineteenth-century reform movements, women's history, and socialintellectual history. Donna M. DeBlasio Youngstown...