Into the Mouths of Babes An Anthology of Children's Abolitionist Literature

Subjects:

• Literature » American Literature
• Literature » Children's & Young Adult Literature
• Popular Culture » American Studies
• Women's Studies » Women in Literature & the Arts

Reviews:

• This groundbreaking volume collects politically motivated abolitionist literature written for children by women, and in so doing it reveals, according to De Rosa, a group of writers who created "a literary space and public forum for their views through the seemingly non-threatening genre of children's literature."...The volume includes selections by 20 American and two British women--of whom Harriet Beecher Stowe is the best known, trailed closely by Sarah Josepha Hale and Eliza Lee Follen--and it also presents works of several writers identified only by pseudonyms, e.g., "Grandmother," "Aunt Mary," "SCC." Such evidence of obscurity only underlines the need to recover, as De Rosa puts it, "literary works that offer important insights about forgotten women authors," works that reveal "their participation in their historical-political moment, and their literary production in nineteenth-century America." Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
  —Choice December 2005
• Nineteenth century American women were not supposed to have political views, much less air them in public. Women abolitionists found a unique way to participate in the public debate over slavery by writing about the subject in children's literature. De Rosa has recovered such works from the 1820s to 1850s and has assembled them in this scholarly volume....Black and white reproductions display original illustrations, and a list of selected libraries that own original editions of works in the anthology are included.
  —Reference & Research Book News August 2005
• Throughout, a concise cultural overview of gendered issues is followed by insightful and careful close reading of texts. What is particularly useful is De Rosa's discussion of little-known texts and authors. By focusing on the intersection of gender and authorship, De Rosa adds to the studies of female authorship of the nineteenth century, examining narrative strategies that allowed women a public voice on the important issue of abolition.
  —Children's Literature Association Quarterly Winter 2005

• Endorsement From Jane Tompkins
  University of Illinois at Chicago: DeRosa's anthology shows how extensively antebellum women writers used what power they had to oppose slavery. And it broadens our understanding of how women contrived to be politically active in a social climate that discouraged it strongly. These texts are fertile ground for future scholars of 19th century women's writing.

Table of Contents:

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Amelia Opie
• Sarah Josepha Buell Hale
• Florence
• Elizabeth Margaret Chandler
• Eliza Lee Cabot Follen
• Hannah and Mary Townsend
• Anne Wales Abbot
• S.C.C.
• Jane Elizabeth Jones
• Ann Preston
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Aunt Mary
• Grandmother
• Harriet Newell Greene Butts
• Kate Barclay
• Madame
• Anna Richardson
• Julia Colman and Matilda Thompson
• Aunt Lizzie
• American Reform Tract and Book Society
• Able Charles Thomas
• Bibliography
• List of Selected Libraries That Own Original Editions of Works in the Anthology
• Index