Spirit of Seventy-Six, The; or, The Coming Woman.
[Wormeley, Mrs. Ariana Randolph Curtis]. The Spirit of Seventy-Six; or, The Coming Woman. A prophetic drama, followed by A Change Of Base, and Doctor Modschein. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1868.
8vo.; contemporary ownership signature; maroon cloth; t.e.g.; spine sunned, extremities frayed.
First edition of Curtis’s anonymously published parlor farce; while Curtis’s husband Daniel is often listed as co-author, recent scholarship suggests he had only a minor hand in it, if any. Arianna Wormeley was one of three sisters—the others were Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer and Katherine Prescott Wormeley—who made their marks as American authors and translators.
The Spirit of Seventy-Six paints a portrait of Boston in 1776, when the enfranchised women, having won all major political offices, provokes the hero to fret that though a male he too has an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The play debuted in 1868; Bettina Friedl records that by 1889 it had been published in 23 editions. While Curtis suggests that over-zealotry, even among reformers, may have unforeseen consequences, the play ends “with a judicial epilogue reminiscent of Margaret Fuller’s The Great Lawsuit, which addresses the women in the audience as the jury that has to decide “either for or against the defendant,—Man.”
One of the earliest theatrical pieces addressing the issue of women’s rights. Friedl, 16-18. Later editions of this title are readily procurable; the first edition is scarce.
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