Abigail Adams

A Writing Life

Edith B. Gelles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136804861
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

In this book, Edith B. Gelles asserts that Abigail Adams' vivid, insightful letters are "the best account that exists from the pre to the post-Revolutionary period in America of a woman's life and world." Adams' spontaneous, witty letters serve dual purposes for the modern reader: it provides an intriguing first hand account of pivotal historical events and it shows how these events from the Boston Tea Party to the War of 1812 entered the private sphere. Included in the book is a chronology, notes and reference section and a selected bibliography. This book will be a must for all scholars of American literature, history and politics seeking to understand this literary figure.

Notes and References

Chapter One

1. Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

2. For the full story of the Adams Papers, see L. H. Butterfield, “Introduction,” in The Adams Papers: Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1961), 1:xiii–lxxiv; L. H. Butterfield, “The Papers of the Adams Family: Some Account of Their History,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 71 (1959): 328–356. For the printed letters, see L. H. Butterfield et al., eds., The Adams Papers: Adams Family Correspondence, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1963–1973); Richard Alan Ryerson et al., eds., The Adams Papers: Adams Family Correspondence, vols. 5–6 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). Also see Charles Francis Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1848); L. H. Butterfield et al., eds., The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762–1784 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975); Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959); Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1801 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1947); Charles Francis Adams, ed., Correspondence between John Adams and Mercy Warren (New York: Arno Press, 1972); Caroline Smith DeWindt, ed., The Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, Daughter of John Adams, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1841–1842).

3. For eighteenth-century letter writing, see Janet Gurkin Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus, Ohio, 1982); Howard Anderson, Philip B. Daghlian, and Irvin Ehrenpreis, eds., The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1966); Robert Adams Day, Told in Letters: Epistolary Fiction before Richardson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966); Robert Halsband, The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965–1967); Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1980); Sally L. Kitch, This Strange Society of Women: Reading the Letters and Lives of the Woman’s Commonwealth (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982); Yale French Studies 71 (1986).

4. Richard Alan Ryerson et al., eds., The Adams Papers: Adams Family Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 5:436, Sept. 5, 1784. Hereafter cited as AFC.

Chapter Two

1. For Abigail’s famous letter, see AFC, 1:370, Mar. 31, 1776.

2. See Jay Fliegelman, Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1993), 141–142.

3. For jokes and teasing, see Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960).

4. Frequently used in the eighteenth century to mean: “One Joined to another in mutual benevolence and intimacy.” See Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 1:1081.

5. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967).

6. Abigail’s letters were first published in 1840 in a highly edited edition by her grandson Charles Francis Adams, which was so popular that it was followed in the next decade by three more editions.

7. For a recent and full discussion of the relative roles of women and men in marriage in early America, see Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 57–95.

8. AFC, 1:382, Apr. 14, 1776.

9. For John’s respect for and assistance to Mercy Otis Warren, see chapter 2, “Bonds of Friendship.”

10. Abigail did answer John’s impertinence: “I can not say that I think you very generous to the ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men … You insist upon retaining a absolute power over Wives.” She concluded that in the end women have different powers: “Charm by accepting, by submitting sway / Yet have our Humour most when we obey” AFC, 1:402–403, May 7, 1776.

11. Ibid., 397–398, Apr. 27, 1776.

12. Abigail’s d...