Lydia Maria Child (1802–80) was one of nineteenth-century America’s most influential writers and activists. Throughout her life, she deployed her pen on behalf of an array of causes that included abolitionism, women’s rights, the equality of religions, and justice for Native Americans. Child launched her career in 1824, at the age of twenty-two, with her novel Hobomok, a Tale of Early Times. Set during the first years of Puritan settlement in New England, the novel dramatizes the religious disputes that roiled the early colonies; it also portrays—and mythologizes—the relations between the colonists and the local Native Americans, especially through its depiction of a marriage between its Wampanoag title character and a young English colonist, Mary Conant. Hobomok’s rendering of an interracial marriage garnered considerable controversy upon its publication, and the novel helped usher in a wave of novelistic explorations of early American history, and particularly of the role of Indigenous people in it. Today, Hobomok commands interest as a crucial contribution to this project of national mythmaking in early nineteenth-century American literature, as well as the first work by a major but still often underappreciated nineteenth-century woman writer.
This first new edition of Hobomok in nearly four decades includes the annotated text of the novel as well as an introduction that traces Child’s career and outlines the novel’s engagement with colonial New England history, the religious debates the novel stages, and the way it mythologizes Indigenous figures and Indigenous–settler relations. The edition also features a rich array of contextual materials, including letters by Child, early reviews, and other documentation of the novel’s creation and reception; accounts of colonial New England from the time in which the novel is set; Indigenous accounts of the history of the region; examples of Native American writing and of other narratives about Native Americans from the period of the novel’s composition; and examples of Child’s later activist writing.
Comments
“Lydia Maria Child’s novel Hobomok is a fascinating read, both visionary and problematic in its depiction of the explosive effects of European settlement on Indigenous peoples of North America. Tiffany Potter’s new edition provides reviews, maps, historical documents, and—crucially—Indigenous perspectives that enable readers to appreciate the novel’s significance and moral complexity. It confirms Child as one of the foremost intellectuals of her generation, seen here at the beginning of her lifetime of political engagement. A wonderful resource for a captivating book.” — Lydia L. Moland, Colby College
“Nearly 40 years after Carolyn Karcher’s groundbreaking recovery of Hobomok, this new scholarly edition of Child’s fascinating and important novel is very long overdue, and provides a valuable scholarly and historical framework essential to understanding the novel and its significance within the history of U.S. literary nationalism and the politics of race and gender more generally. Editor Tiffany Potter has performed a great service to both students and scholars of this formative era of U.S. literary history in presenting for the first time the original novel in relation to a range of historical documents that contextualize and bring into relief its many fascinating and historically significant elements. These materials, as well as the editor’s astute introduction and wealth of explanatory notes, also provide a fuller picture of the novel’s influences and reception, as well as its place within Child’s developing career as an author and activist, and within the broader project of nationalist mythmaking with which so many authors of the time were engaged. The editor strikes just the right balance in providing in-depth scholarly explanations of the relevant historical contexts but in a concise, streamlined form that will be of great use to students in the classroom, and to scholars and general readers as well.” — James Salazar, Temple University
“Situating Child’s first novel within the author’s engagement with and departures from existing genres and alongside histories of her fictionalized setting, Tiffany Potter’s edition renders this still under-studied and complex novel more thoroughly comprehensible and accessible. Potter’s clear introductory framing offers a frank discussion of Child’s literary and activist career, acknowledging both her radicality for her time and her severe shortcomings as a would-be ally to Indigenous people. The supplementary materials included here add essential historical context for the novel, Child’s career, and beyond. The resources presenting Indigenous histories, personal narrative, and literature will be particularly useful for developing a more comprehensive understanding of this novel’s importance and limitations. This edition of Hobomok will serve new and familiar readers of Child’s novel for years to come.” — Brigitte Fielder, University of Wisconsin-Madison
