Mother's Poems.
[Smith, Julia E.]. Mother’s Poems. Selections of the poems of Mrs. Hannah H. Smith, by her daughter, Julia E. Smith, the only survivor of the family. Hartford: Press of The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1881.
Slim 8vo.; maroon boards, stamped in gilt and blind on the covers; “Julia E. Smith, Glastonbury, Conn., August 1881” has been underlined in blue ink by an unknown hand on the introductory page; contemporary green endpapers; spine chipped in two places; tips bumped. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition. At the age of 89, Smith edited this volume of her mother’s poetry, which contains 50 poems written in rhymed verse. Copies of this posthumous publication were not sold publicly, but rather given to close friends of the family, which accounts for the book’s scarcity. Includes a poem honoring General Lafayette on his final American tour and others on religious, historical, literary, and astrological subjects, as well as a few translations of Italian poems. Two poems are dedicated to her daughters, Laurilla and Julia.
In the introduction, Julia writes of her mother’s many talents and explains how she put together this collection:
For her own amusement, she would occasionally write pieces of poetry, never taking any pains to preserve them. Her youngest daughter [Abby] got herself a blank book, and picked up scraps where she could find them, and copied them, and showed the book to our friends, who urged us to publish them. Such a strong desire has been manifested to me, that I have at last concluded, after much hesitation, to select a part of the pieces in my sister’s copy-book and get them printed; not for public sale, but to be given to near friends.
Hannah Hadassah Hickok Smith (1767-1850), according to The History of Woman Suffrage, "had mental equipment much above that of the average woman of that day." Skilled in math and astronomy as well as linguistics and poetry, she passed her love of learning on to her five precocious daughters. A staunch abolitionist, Mrs. Smith drafted an anti-slavery petition in 1838, which 40 women in Glastonbury signed. The petition was sent to U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams, who presented it to Congress. Some years later the Smith family, upon learning that the Hartford churches had banned William Lloyd Garrison from speaking, invited him to speak from a cart on their front lawn in Glastonbury, CT, much to the dismay of some of their neighbors.
Mother’s Poems was Julia Smith’s last major project; she died five years after its publication.
Very rare; OCLC locates only seven copies.
(#10502)
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