#258: The Forgotten Radical
Whether it was to grandmother\u2019s or grandfather\u2019s house we went, most of us grew up with enough of the tune to get us \u201cOver the River and Through the Wood.\u201d Yet few know much about the poem\u2019s author, Lydia Maria Child. A literary celebrity by the age of 23, she spent much of the 1820s publishing stories, fables, and riddles for young readers, in addition to her blockbuster first novels. But by 1830, Child became an early, and fierce, abolitionist, and in 1833 published one of the first book-length treatises advocating for the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans. How Child gained her convictions\u2014and how she weathered the backlash\u2014is the subject of philosopher Lydia Moland\u2019s new biography, which brings renewed attention to Child\u2019s incisive\u2014and, until now, largely forgotten\u2014critiques of racism and imperialism in 19th-century America.
Go beyond the episode:
- Lydia Moland\u2019s Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life
- Read her essay \u201cFreedom Tales\u201d in our Autumn 2022 issue
- Peruse our back catalog of conversations about the 19th-century: Hollywood influencer Elinor Glyn, the divorce capital of the United States, abortion, the Jerusalem of South America, Gilded Age cocktails, Russian spies in China, white women slaveowners, smells \u2026
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