Sentiments of a British-American Woman: Esther DeBerdt Reed and the American Revolution, by Owen S. Ireland

Abstract

Esther DeBerdt Reed is best known for her political activism on behalf of the American patriots, in which she was engaged when she died suddenly just before her thirty-fourth birthday. Almost certainly the author of The Sentiments of an American Woman, an influential call to women’s patriotic action, Esther Reed was almost as well known in 1780 as her friend Martha Washington. In this meticulously researched biography, Owen S. Ireland traces how Reed evolved from a proud Londoner to an ardent American. In so doing, he offers fine-grained insight into how one intelligent elite woman negotiated the processes of courtship, family financial and business decisions, and the challenges and rewards of child-rearing amid the upheavals of the imperial crisis. Reed applied her sharp and subtle political mind to shaping her circumstances to pursue the life she envisioned for herself. Her skills and expectations were shaped by her formative years...