Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography

Thousands of short American lives — soldiers, inventors, preachers, governors, novelists — each given a paragraph: born where, did what, and why anyone remembered.

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Child, Mrs. Lydia Maria

author, was born Feb. 11, 1802, in Medford, Mass.

She was a famous writer whose literary career began with the publication of Hobomok, a Tale of Early Times, in 1821, and closed with Aspirations of the World, in 1878. In 1833 she sacrificed much of her popularity by her Appeal for that Class of Americans Called Africans, and was ever after prominent as an abolitionist, assisting her husband in editing the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Among her other works are included The Rebels, a novel in which occurs a speech by James Otis and a sermon by Whitefield, long supposed to be real and not imaginary; The First Settlers of New England; The Mother's Book; The Girl's Book; Philothea, a Greek romance; The Power of Kindness; Isaac T. Hopper, a True Life, a popular biography of a noted Quaker abolitionist; The Progress of Religious Ideas; Autumnal Leaves; Looking Toward Sunset; The Freedman's Book; and Miria, a Romance of the Republic. She died Oct. 20, 1880, in Wayland, Mass.

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