Radical Passion

The Editor and Translator: Christoph Lohmann, Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Indiana University, holds academic degrees from Swarthmore College, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Besides having published numerous articles in scholarly journals, he co-edited several volumes of W. D. Howells's letters and literary criticism. A native of Germany, he recently turned to German-English literary translations. He and his wife, Pamela Lohmann, are co-translators of Ruth Rehmann's The Man in the Pulpit, published in 1997.

«Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass enjoyed one of the most productive and complex relationships in nineteenth-century America, a relationship that crossed boundaries of race, class, gender, and nationality...'Radical Passion' is indispensable reading for scholars and students of nineteenth-century intellectual history, American and African-American studies, and anyone eager to understand the intellectual odyssey of Frederick Douglass.» (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University)«Christoph Lohmann's collection of the writings and letters of Ottilie Assing illuminates a unique storehouse of radical antislavery, anticlerical, and feminist thought from the mid-nineteenth-century...[It] shows Assing to be, one of the keenest observers of American politics, reform, and culture in the age of the Civil War.» (David W. Blight, Amherst College)«Lohmann's meticulous scholarship and skillful translations snatch from oblivion Ottilie Assing's incisive observations and commentaries on American society, politics, and culture of the 1850s and 1860s... A remarkable, important book.» (Maria Diedrich, University of Münster)«Assing's...relentless pursuit of liberty for all races and creeds form[s] a lasting impression of one woman's political spirit... Lohmann's edition of Assing's reports on America and of her surviving letters to Frederick Douglass closes one of the gaping holes in our knowledge.» (Wolfgang Hochbruck, University of Stuttgart)«This is one of the most important collections of nineteenth-century articles and letters to appear in twenty years. Lohmann is a master translator and editor as well as an elegant writer. 'Radical Passion' is not only a joy to read; it is indispensable for anyone interested in antebellum reform and the dilemmas of race and nation.» (John Stauffer, Harvard University)