Daughter of Boston

The vivid diary of a transcendentalist, early feminist, and writer--a female Samuel Pepys
In nineteenth-century Boston, amidst the popular lecturing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the discussion groups led by Margaret Fuller, sat a remarkable young woman, Caroline Healey Dall (1822-1912): transcendentalist, early feminist, writer, reformer, and, perhaps most importantly, active diarist. During the seventy-five years that Dall kept a diary, she captured all the fascinating details of her sometimes agonizing personal life, and she also wrote about all the major figures who surrounded her. Her diary, filling forty-five volumes, is perhaps the longest running diary ever written by any American and the most complete account of a nineteenth-century woman"s life.
In Daughter of Boston, scholar Helen Deese has painstakingly combed through these diaries and created a single fascinating volume of Dall"s observations, judgments, descriptions, and reactions.
"Deese"s selections from the journals reveal Dall"s brilliant mind, her ready wit, and her deep understanding of the currents of change that swept the country during its first century of nationhood."
--Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters
"Caroline Healey Dall"s writings will become a keystone to our understanding of nineteenth-century New England . . . a true historical find."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Daughter of Boston provides a fascinating glimpse into a woman"s life in nineteenth-century New England."
--Anne E. Stein, Chicago Tribune
Helen R. Deese is the Caroline Healey Dall editor for the Massachusetts Historical Society. She lives in Flint and Ann Arbor, Michigan.