The Mother's Book

Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, opponent of American expansionism, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist. Her book An Appeal in Favour of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833) argued in favour of the immediate emancipation of the slaves, and she is sometimes said to have been the first white person to have written a book in support of this policy. In 1839, she was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti- Slavery Society, and became editor of the society's National Anti-Slavery Standard (1841). During the 1860s, Child wrote pamphlets on Indian rights. The most prominent, An Appeal for the Indians (1868), called upon government officials, as well as religious leaders, to bring justice to American Indians. Other works include Isaac T. Hopper (1853), Philothea: A Grecian Romance (1836) and A Romance of the Republic (1867).