An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called "Lady Scribblers"

Abstract

The four modern biographies of baker's daughter who became author, editor, and reformer William Lloyd Garrison called the first woman in republic have so differed in their portrayal and interpretation of Lydia Maria Francis Child that they might almost be read collectively as record of a woman suffering from multiple personalities. More correctly, their disparate delineations support at least one hypothesis that underlies recent theories of literary criticism and, to a lesser extent, intellectual history. In their overlapping readings of manuscripts and printed texts available to all, Child's biographers seemingly validate contention that meaning is derived from reader's response rather than writer's intent. Without doubt questions Child's biographers asked of same data have, at least in part, been shaped by their intellectual milieu, whether civil rights movement that followed 1954 Brown decision or new feminism of 1970s and 1980s. The troubling question, of course, is how fully and accurately distinctive Maria Childs portrayed in 1964, 1965, 1992, and 1994 resemt)le gifted writer and ardent abolitionist who lived from 1802 until 1880 and spoke against racism and gender inequality of her own times. Milton Meltzer's Tongue of Flame: The Life of Lydia Maria Child (1965) is a simple, straightforward tale of a dedicated mild-mannered, and unconflicted abolitionist. For him, Child's significant career began in 1833, although her Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, published that year, unquestionably scotched popularity she had achieved in preceding decade as a novelist, editor of America's first children's magazine, and author of domestic handbooks. As early converts to antislavery radicalism, she and her equally committed but ruinously impractical husband then sacrificed physical and financial comfort to further cause. When David's forlorn attempt to produce free-labor beet sugar in western Massachusetts multiplied massive debts he had already accumulated from unsuccessful news-