Lydia Maria Francis Child

The popularity and moral force of the American author Lydia Maria Francis Child (1802-1880) contributed to the impact radical abolitionists exerted on the antislavery debate that preceded the Civil War.

Lydia Maria Francis was born in Medford, Mass., of an old New England family, on Feb. 11, 1802, and revealed early her sensibilities and intelligence. Her novels of pioneer life, Hobomok (1824) and The Rebels (1825), opened a literary career for her. Juvenile Miscellany, an annual that she instituted in 1826, pioneered in its field, and her later publications appealed to girls and wives. In 1828 she married David Lee Child, a Harvard College graduate who had capped an idealistic, adventurous youth by becoming a lawyer. As a state legislator and editor of the Massachusetts Journal, he seemed on a successful path.

Both were converted to abolitionism by William Lloyd Garrison, but it was Lydia who most startled conventional circles with her Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833). This tract made abolitionists of such noteworthy persons as the Reverend William Ellery Channing and Charles Sumner. It also, however, closed various social circles to her and caused her book sales to fall. Her Juvenile Miscellany suspended, she pressed on as author and abolitionist. She published several abolitionist compilations, as well as biographies of notable women and the groundbreaking History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations (1835). Her husband introduced beet sugar manufacture in the United States and penned important abolitionist pamphlets. However, he was impractically dedicated to agricultural experiments, and his wife was required to manage their often-constricted finances.

In 1840 Child assumed the editorship of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, representing Garrison in New York. While there she wrote Letters from New York (1843, 1845), which contained much of contemporary interest. Her husband joined her in the work in 1843. The next year, embittered by factional differences between abolitionists, she returned to private life, settling in Wayland, Mass. Among her later books was Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages (1855), which once more broke ground in its religious liberalism.

When John Brown was wounded in the raid on Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859, Child asked permission to nurse him; this resulted in an exchange of letters which were read nationwide. Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason of Virginia (1860) exhibited her abolitionist prose at its strongest.

Child's later writings struck a summary note, as in Looking toward Sunset (1864). Many of her works were outmoded, but her own character evoked admiration. She survived her husband 6 years, dying on July 7, 1880. A memorial volume, Letters (1883), was introduced by John Greenleaf Whittier and included Wendell Phillips's funeral address.

Further Reading

Two biographies of Child are Helene G. Baer, The Heart Is like Heaven: The Life of Lydia Maria Child (1965), and Milton Meltzer, Tongue of Flame: The Life of Lydia Maria Child (1965). She is discussed in numerous works, including Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Contemporaries (1899), and Margaret Farrand Thorp, Female Persuasion: Six Strong-minded Women (1949). Her works are described in volume 2 of Jacob Blanck, Bibliography of American Literature (1957).

Additional Sources

Clifford, Deborah Pickman, Crusader for freedom: a life of Lydia Maria Child, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Karcher, Carolyn L., The first woman in the republic: a cultural biography of Lydia Maria Child, Durham: Duke University Press, 1994. □

Child, Lydia Maria (1802–1880), novelist, journalist, antislavery reformer.One of nineteenth‐century America's most influential writers and activists, Child, the daughter of a Medford, Massachusetts, baker, was largely self‐educated. After making her literary debut with a novel of interracial marriage, Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times (1824), she won popularity by editing the nation's first children's magazine (Juvenile Miscellany, 1826–1834) and publishing two best‐selling domestic advice manuals, The Frugal Housewife (1829) and The Mother's Book (1831). Upon her marriage in 1828 to the Whig newspaper editor David Lee Child, the two agitated against the forced removal of the Cherokees from Georgia and soon against slavery as well, joining forces with William Lloyd Garrison in 1831.

Child produced more than a dozen books and many articles and short stories for the abolitionist cause, besides editing the National Anti‐Slavery Standard (1841–1843). Of these works, the most enduring is An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans (1833), which sets U.S. slavery in an international historical context, denounces all forms of racial discrimination, and refutes theories of African inferiority. An Appeal helped recruit such stalwarts as William Ellery Channing, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Charles Sumner to the antislavery banner.

Child's pioneering History of the Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations (1835) influenced such feminist theorists as Sarah Grimké, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Her Letters from New York (1843–1845), which publicized the plight of the city's poor, launched a new school of urban journalism. And her Progress of Religious Ideas, through Successive Ages (1855) combated bigotry and dogmatism by highlighting the commonalities between Christianity and other faiths.
See also Antebellum Era; Cherokee Cases; Feminism; Indian History and Culture: The Indian in Popular Culture; Indian Removal Act; Racism; Women's Rights Movements.

Bibliography

Deborah Pickman Clifford , Crusader for Freedom: A Life of Lydia Maria Child, 1992.
Carolyn L. Karcher , The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child, 1994.

Carolyn L. Karcher

Lydia Maria Child 1802–80, American author and abolitionist, b. Lydia Maria Francis, Medford, Mass. She edited (1826–34) the Juvenile Miscellany, a children's periodical. She and her husband (David Lee Child, whom she married in 1828) were devoted to the antislavery cause; she wrote widely read pamphlets on the subject in addition to editing (1841–49) the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a New York City weekly newspaper. Selections from her Standard essays were published in 1999 as Letters from New-York. Other writings include several historical novels and a book on the history of religions. Her Frugal Housewife (1829) went through many editions.

Bibliography: See her letters (with introduction by J. G. Whittier, 1883, repr. 1970); biographies by H. G. Baer (1964), M. Meltzer (1965), W. S. Osborne (1980), D. P. Clifford (1992), and C. Karcher (1994).