Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott.

Edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer, with the assistance of Holly Byers Ochoa and Carol Faulkner. Women in American History. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, c. 2002. Pp. liv, 580. $55.00, ISBN 0-252-02674-8.)

This volume is a needed addition to the literature on nineteenth-century American women's history. Since historians and students often rely on published collections of correspondence, without such editions historical figures are more likely to be overlooked or given less attention. Once described as the "greatest American woman" by one early-twentieth-century biographer, Mott nevertheless has always played second fiddle to her peers. Considered a coadjutor in the women's fights movement, she has often been portrayed as Elizabeth Cady Stanton's spiritual inspiration at the first convention in Seneca Falls, New York, rather than as an originator or leader of the later campaign. As an antislavery activist, Mott also receded into the shadow of towering figures like William Lloyd Garrison, whose correspondence was published in the 1970s. Even abolitionist Lydia Maria Child had her letters published long before Mott, presumably because, as a fiction writer, Child attracted the interest of English and American Studies scholars.

Two reasons explain why it has taken so long for Mott to have her letters published in a scholarly edition: first, she cannot be identified with a single historical development because of her range of diverse reform activities, which included abolition, peace, women's fights, Native American fights, religious dissent, opposition to capital punishment, prison reform, temperance, sabbath reform, and education reform; and second, Mott does not easily conform to the conventional category of "intellectual" nor fit neatly into a literary tradition. As a Quaker minister, Mott spoke extemporaneously--she did not compose her speeches at the writing table. Her correspondence was often written hastily (unlike the carefully crafted epistles of Thomas Jefferson). And she never published novels, which would have enabled literary scholars to scrutinize her texts for clues to her thinking on the political and social issues of the day.

This new edition offers a superb selection of Mott's letters. It is filled with many useful aids: a chronology of Mott's life; a biographical directory that identifies Mott's correspondents and individuals mentioned in her letters; and an appendix that offers a guide to all of her extant correspondence and the repositories where these letters can be found. The introduction, subtitled "Wife, Mother, Quaker, Activist," reveals the preferences of the editors. In that sense, this volume is similar to its predecessor, James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters, edited by Mott's granddaughter Anna Davis Hallowell in 1884. Both versions highlight Mott's domestic life, her ministry, and her reform activism.

Yet the editors of this volume shift the perspective on Mott's home life. Rather than portraying the perfect wife and mother, Mott's letters illustrate how her life captured the "interweaving of politics and daily life" (p. xxviii). They mix personal information with commentary on the hot political topics of the day. In this refashioning, Mott appears as a kind of political pundit who doubles as a nineteenth-century "soccer mom." There is only one thing missing from this fine volume: the introduction does not explain Mott's intellectual life--the way her thinking was influenced through her reading, and how she incorporated ideas from her favorite writers, often discussed in her letters, into her speeches and sermons.

Despite that omission, this collection belongs in every college library, where it can encourage a new generation to appreciate Mott for her life of reform.

NANCY ISENBERG

University of Tulsa