Selections from the Poems of Mrs. Hannah H. Smith.
Presentation Copy
With Rare Signature of Julia E. Smith
1 of 9 Known Copies
Smith, Julia E. Selections from the Poems of Mrs. Hannah H. Smith, by her Daughter, Julia E. Smith, the Only Survivor of the Family. Hartford, Conn.: Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1881.
8vo; maroon cloth with Mother's Poems stamped in gilt on cover; blind-stamped border, corners with a touch of rubbing, else a lovely, near fine copy of this rare volume of 19th century American verse.
First and only Edition, with the extremely rare signature in ink of the editor, the author's daughter, Julia E. Smith pasted on front free endpaper, and in pencil on titlepage, M.H. Williams (in one hand) and (in another hand) from Miss Julia Smith. OCLC/RLIN show only seven copies. Published when the editor was 89 years old, the pencil inscription, "from Miss Julia Smith" may well be in her aged, frail hand. The ink signature pasted in dates from an earlier time in her life.
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." Indeed, as a mathematician, astronomer, linguist and poet, she passed her love of learning on to her precocious daughters. In 1838, Mrs. Smith, a staunch abolitionist (as was her husband) drafted an anti-slavery petition, which forty women of Glastonbury signed and sent on 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, to the dismay of some of their neighbors.
This wonderful posthumous publication includes an original poem honoring General Lafayette on his final American tour and others on religious, historical, literary, astrological and sentimental subjects as well as a few translations of Italian poems. From this little volume, it is clear that this Revolutionary daughter had a profound influence on her well-known daughters Julia and Abby Smith.
This volume is the third known publication by Julia E. Smith (1792-1886), who was the first person to translate the Bible without any other assistance. Published as a feminist statement during the height of their tax controversy with the Glastonbury town officials, this edition of the Bible is known as the first feminist Bible. Her other work, Abby Smith and her Cows, recounts Abby and Julia's protest over unjust taxes that became a cause celebre for suffragists and gained them national fame as well as public support from Abby Foster Kelley, Lucy Stone, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Stanton, Anthony, et al.
History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 337.
NAW, Vol. III, p. 302.
http://www.undelete.org/library/library0041-40.html.
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