California In-doors and Out.
Observations On Sing Sing And Other Subjects
By A Female Prison Reformer And Activist
Farnham, Eliza W. California, In-doors and Out; or, How we Farm, Mine and Live Generally in the Golden State…New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1856.
8vo.; preliminaries and occasional pages foxed; some pages heavily sunned; brown cloth, elaborately stamped in blind; covers and spine lightly worn.
First edition of Farnham’s discourse on California life and on her life in California. Signed lightly i pencil by an early reader, "A.B. Motgomery."
Born in Rensselaerville, New York, Farnham (1815-1864) was a prison reformer, author, and lecturer. In her first book, Life in Prairie Land (1846), she recounted her experiences in Illinois, where she moved with her husband after a difficult early life. Though an ardent feminist, she was at odds with the mainstream suffrage movement, arguing that women should stay out of the public arena and instead strive to elevate society morally and spiritually. Men and women were not created equal, she contended, positing woman’s superiority over man, whose station in life was to provide for the physical needs of the race while women were to be freed to exercise the complete development of their abilities.
As a matron at Sing Sing she became an advocate for prison reform, and embodied her ideals in a second book that was praised by Charles Sumner. She later moved to Boston and worked with Samuel Gridley Howe, taking care of Laura Bridgement. After hearing of the death of her husband in California, she went west to settle his estate and endeavored to take a group of unmarried women with her to help “foster stability and decorum amid the disorder of the gold rush.” Upon arrival in California, she bought a farm in Santa Cruz county and recorded her observations in California In-doors and Out (1856), including an attack on San Quentin. “Much of her time was now spent in preparing her longest and most significant work, Woman in Her Era (1864), a treatise asserting the superiority of the female sex,” about which she addressed the National Woman’s Rights Convention in New York City in May, 1858, after which she returned to California, though she continued to participate in controversial issues on the national level. She became active in the Woman’s Loyal National League and petitioned Congress to end slavery. After serving as a nurse at Gettysburg, she died of consumption in New York City in 1864.
In California, In-doors and Out, Farnham, using the very modern genre of autobiography/ memoir, touches on a variety of topics, including her travels to California and dealing with widowhood; her attachment to the Western landscape; social life in California at the time; the dregs of the Gold Rush; and, last but not least, the cruelty of the prison system.
An important and strangely contemporary volume, dealing with many issues (prison reform, environmental politics, economic redistribution) that are still very much with us today.
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