New Year in Cuba: Mary Garner Lowell's Travel Diary, 1831-1832, and: From Beacon Hill to the Crystal Palace: The 1851 Travel Diary of a Working-class Woman, and: The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray's Diary (review)

Not very long ago, a nineteenth-century woman's diary was published only if she were married to an important man or if she participated in an event judged to be historically significant. Happily, the field has expanded to include many published diaries, including those by "ordinary women." The editorial framework that supports each diary with scholarly annotation and reflection has also evolved along a continuum. Some diaries bear traditional minimal footnotes that aim at illuminating places or persons mentioned in the text, while others are introduced and analyzed with more editorial range in order to place them within the context of contemporary scholarship. In the following three books, each diarist and her editor create a collaborative text.

Boston Brahmin Mary Gardner Lowell's diary about her six-month trip through the southern United States and into rural Cuba is a wonderful read because there is always something new to record: life aboard a ship, first encounters with slavery, interesting customs of wealthy Cubans. Editor Karen Robert's introduction provides a dynamic look at the historical context—international slave revolts and the North's trade interests in products produced by Latin American slaves—that underlies the silences within Lowell's journal. (As diary lovers from Arthur Ponsonby on have noted, the writer's ego usually overshadows external historical events.) Robert also points out poignant ironies within the diary—Mary's description of meager slave rations, followed five days later with details of her own lavish breakfast with no indication of self-consciousness—and argues that Lowell's social class and the strict gender norms in Cuba circumscribed her viewpoint. We are forewarned about Lowell's limits, yet invited into her text by Robert and occasionally rewarded by the diarist's insights. For example, Lowell moves beyond her fears to describe the tragic cost of sugar for her tea: "The blacks on the sugar estate are the most ferocious looking set of beings I ever saw & it would not surprise me at any moment if they were roused to vengeance, they are worked unmercifully and most cruelly treated.... Within a very short time one has hung & another scalded himself to death" (89). Lowell ultimately cannot shed the baggage of her class privilege, however. She writes of the servant who accompanies her, "Lorenza was so much occupied in packing that I could not have her assistance in dressing and was obliged to remain in my berth until the ship had passed the Moro, a circumstance I regretted as it is a scene well worth witnessing" (38).

It is a miracle that the short diary written by the very same Lorenza in 1851 , when she served the next generation of Lowells during their tour of Europe, now reaches us as From Beacon Hill to the Crystal Palace: The 1851 Travel Diary of a Working-class Woman by Lorenza Stevens Berbineau. The manuscript was preserved amidst this wealthy family's archives and presents a rare Upstairs/Downstairs version of travel. Karen Kilcup, in my opinion, is far more than the editor of this text, for her substantial introductory essay places Berbineau within the context of recent scholarship on class, gender, and the particularly American style of travel writing. In a wonderful comparison with the travel narrative of contemporary Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kilcup demonstrates, for example, how sentimentalist Stowe focuses on Mount Blanc as...