Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott (Women in American History) [Hardcover]

Beverly Wilson Palmer (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Women in American History | Publication Date: January 9, 2002

This landmark volume makes widely available for the first time the correspondence of the Quaker activist Lucretia Coffin Mott. Scrupulously reproduced and annotated, these letters illustrate the length and breadth of her public life as a leading reformer while providing an intimate glimpse of her family life. Dedicated to reform of almost every kind - temperance, peace, equal rights, woman suffrage, nonresistance, and the abolition of slavery - Mott viewed woman's rights as only one element of a broad-based reform agenda for American society. A founder and leader of many antislavery organizations, including the racially integrated American Antislavery Society and the Philadelphia Female Anti-slavery Society, she housed fugitive slaves, maintained lifelong friendships with such African-American colleagues as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, and agitated to bring her fellow Quakers into consensus on taking a stand against slavery. Mott was a seasoned activist by 1848 when she helped to organize the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention, whose resolutions called for equal treatment of women in all arenas. Mott tried to pursue a neutral course when her friends Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony disagreed with other woman's rights leaders over the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal rights for freedmen but not for any women. Her private views on this breach within the woman's movement emerge for the first time in these letters. An active public life, however, is only half the story of this dedicated and energetic woman. Mott and her husband of fifty-six years, James, raised five children to adulthood, and her letters to other reformers and fellow Quakers are interspersed with the informal "hurried scraps" she wrote to and about her cherished family. An invaluable resource on an extraordinary woman, these selected letters reveal the incisive mind, clear sense of mission, and level-headed personality that made Lucretia Coffin Mott a natural leader and a major force in nineteenth-century American life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This admirably edited and handsomely published book is a great contribution to printed scholarly resources for 19th-century history. Lucretia Mott was engaged in several of the central social and political movements of that century, and her correspondence opens views into them, especially abolition, women's rights, and religion and Quakerism. But one will also find comments on domestic life and childrearing, public events, pacifism, and Indian rights... Palmer included as much scholarly apparatus as a reader could want." -- Choice "This scrupulously annotated volume makes widely available for the first time the correspondence of the nineteenth-century Quaker activist who was dedicated to numerous reform movements, including temperance, peace, equal rights, woman suffrage, nonresistance, and the abolition of slavery." -- Documentary Editing "While scholars will rejoice in this volume, lay readers, too, will find the letters entertaining and inspiring. Beverly Palmer has done the Religious Society of Friends a real service." --Friends Journal ADVANCE PRAISE: "Finally, a chance to see the full range of ideas, concerns, words of Lucretia Mott, the first foremother of the U.S. feminist movement. Beverly Palmer has performed an enormous service, for Lucretia Mott's many appreciators and for many others, who will now know the historical significance of this great "woman." -- Ellen Carol DuBois, editor of The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches

From the Inside Flap

"Finally, a chance to see the full range of ideas, concerns, words of Lucretia Mott, the first foremother of the U.S. feminist movement. Beverly Palmer has performed an enormous service, for Lucretia Mott's many appreciators and for many others, who will now know the historical significance of this great woman." -- Ellen Carol DuBois, editor of The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches

Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press; annotated edition edition (January 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252026748
• ISBN-13: 978-0252026744
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,216,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Details of life for a woman to whom we owe our voting ability, October 13, 2006

By 

Laura L. Mays Hoopes "woman in science" (Claremont, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott (Women in American History) (Hardcover)

Lucretia Mott, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and many others worked hard to get the vote for women. But reading this carefully edited volume of her letters will give you another view of her life: it was very quotidian. Family issues were a great concern, and she was the clerk of the females in her Quaker congregation. She cared deeply about slavery as well as about suffrage; these were her major issues but fairness in all things could have been her watchword.
Beverly Palmer introduces us to her in an opening essay, and writes helpful clues as to the meaining of each section of letters, in addition to the complete and easy-to-understand footnotes, which bring out the context for each letter. She leaves center stage to Lucretia Mott, while giving us the tools we need to appreciate what she accomplished.
At the time when the bandwagon for women's voting was getting rolling, her family life was heavily impacted and you can read her plaintive requests that the meetings far afield not be held so often, but then when others scheduled them anyway, her assurances that yes, she would attend and had written to others to make sure they'd be there too.
Susan B. Anthony was such a dedicated person that she never married and had no children, and she saw how family life was drawing her colleagues in the fight out of the fray so she protested when each one became pregnant yet again. But Lucretia Mott did not; she was always supportive of both Susan (whom she offered to send some special tea to help her relax) and the married women with children who were also leading the movement. She undertook to write to influential men urging their support for the cause too. Reading these letters will give anyone a much clearer sense of what these women were up against.
Reading a biography of Mott will provide some insights, but I would argue that you'll understand her a lot better by reading her own words. Very worthwhile book!