Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910

The daughter of Julia Ward Howe offers an intimate portrait of one of 19th-century America's most remarkable women. Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards knew her subject intimately, as child, witness, and inheritor, and the biography benefits from this closeness. Here is the woman who transformed "John Brown's Body" into "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," whose lyrics still rally Americans nearly two centuries later. Here too is the abolitionist who hosted salons for the cause, the poet who refused to be confined by convention, and the champion of women's rights who lived to see the movement's early victories. Richards traces her mother's lineage back to Revolutionary War heroes, showing how history shaped the woman who would help shape history herself. Written in the early 20th century as personal memory blurred with historical record, this book offers an irreplaceable window into the inner life of a public icon, the woman behind the anthem, the mother behind the reformer.