Lydia Maria Child (1802 - 1880)

Lydia Maria Child

Lydia Maria Child, née Francis, is an American writer and journalist, women's rights and Indian rights activist, and a prominent abolitionist.

Lydia Francis was born into a family of abolitionists, which shaped her worldview. From the age of 18, she taught, wrote historical novels and in 1826 founded a periodical for children "Juvenile Miscellany".

Her first novel, Hobomock, was published in 1824 - set in colonial New England and based on the marriage of a white woman, Mary Conant, and a Native American named Hobomock. In 1833, Lydia Child published An Appeal in Favor of the Class of Americans Called Africans, which recounted the history of slavery and decried the educational and employment inequalities of the black population in the United States. As a result, she was expectedly publicly condemned and her magazine collapsed. But this book united and empowered like-minded people in the abolitionist movement.

On the subject of inequality, Lydia Child wrote throughout her life, and she also spoke out on behalf of Native American peoples. In 1861, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was published. Her many books also include Flowers for Children (1844-47), Facts and Fictions (1846), The Freedmen's Book (1865), and An Address to the Indians (1868).