Description
Book SynopsisHannah Callender Sansom (1737–1801) witnessed the effects of the tumultuous eighteenth century: political struggles, war and peace, and economic development. She experienced the pull of traditional emphases on duty, subjection, and hierarchy and the...
Trade ReviewLong held in private hands, an extraordinary diary kept by Hannah Callender Sansom (1737-1801) has been published verbatim for the first time in this book, which includes in-depth interpretative essays and explanatory footnotes that provide context for readers. Sansom's diary is one of the earliest, fullest documents written by an American woman, and it yields fresh insights into women's experiences in early America, the urban milieu of the emerging middle class, and the culture that shaped both. The Diary of Hannah Callender Sansom offers readers a new look at how a woman in eighteenth-century British America lived and observed the world around her.
* Pennsylvania Heritage *
Readers will certainly enjoy and learn much from this extraordinary account of an eighteenth-century Quaker woman's aspirations, beliefs and experiences in a society and culture undergoing remarkable transition. While HCS’s diary is less comprehensive than Elizabeth Drinker’s, it offers a fascinating and alternative viewpoint on the life of a middle-class Quaker woman in eighteenth-century Philadelphia. This skillfully edited journal will appeal to anyone interested in the histories of gender, the family, race, culture and the Quaker movement in the early modern Atlantic world.
-- Naomi Wood * Quaker Studies *
