Reminiscences, 1819-1899

Julia Ward Howe witnessed America reinvent itself from the early republic through the turn of the century, and this memoir is her unsentimental, often witty account of living through those explosions. Born in New York in 1819 to a stern but intellectually ambitious father, she chronicles her unconventional education, her early literary experiments, and her immersion in the abolitionist and Transcendentalist movements that defined her era. She writes of her marriage to the fiery abolitionist Samuel Gridley Howe, of friendships with Emerson and other minds that shaped a nation, and of the extraordinary moment when, during a visit to a Union army camp, she composed 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' - a song that would outlast the war itself. But this is not merely a record of notable acquaintances. Howe uses her long life to examine what it meant to be a woman who refused the narrow roles prescribed for her, who fought for women's rights and social justice with the same passion she brought to her poetry. Her voice remains sharp, often funny, sometimes bitter, always alive. For anyone curious about the making of modern America, here is one of its makers, speaking directly across the centuries.