The Diary of Hannah Callender Sansom: Sense and Sensibility in the Age of the American Revolution - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801475139 ISBN 13: 9780801475139

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Hannah Callender Sansom (1737–1801) witnessed the effects of the tumultuous eighteenth century: political struggles, war and peace, and economic development. She experienced the pull of traditional emphases on duty, subjection, and hierarchy and the emergence of radical new ideas promoting free choice, liberty, and independence. Regarding these changes from her position as a well-educated member of the colonial Quaker elite and as a resident of Philadelphia, the principal city in North America, this assertive, outspoken woman described her life and her society in a diary kept intermittently from the time she was twenty-one years old in 1758 through the birth of her first grandchild in 1788.

As a young woman, she enjoyed sociable rounds of visits and conviviality. She also had considerable freedom to travel and to develop her interests in the arts, literature, and religion. In 1762, under pressure from her father, she married fellow Quaker Samuel Sansom. While this arranged marriage made financial and social sense, her father's plans failed to consider the emerging goals of sensibility, including free choice and emotional fulfillment in marriage. Hannah Callender Sansom's struggle to become reconciled to an unhappy marriage is related in frank terms both through daily entries and in certain silences in the record. Ultimately she did create a life of meaning centered on children, religion, and domesticity. When her beloved daughter Sarah was of marriageable age, Hannah Callender Sansom made certain that, despite risking her standing among Quakers, Sarah was able to marry for love.

Long held in private hands, the complete text of Hannah Callender Sanson's extraordinary diary is published here for the first time. In-depth interpretive essays, as well as explanatory footnotes, provide context for students and other readers. The diary is one of the earliest, fullest documents written by an American woman, and it provides fresh insights into women's experience in early America, the urban milieu of the emerging middle classes, and the culture that shaped both.

About this title

About the Author

Susan E. Klepp is Professor of History at Temple University. She is author of Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility and Family Limitation in America, 1760–1820, among other books, and coeditor of The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, An Indentured Servant. Karin Wulf is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at the College of William and Mary. She is author of Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia and coeditor of Milcah Martha Moore's Book: A Commonplace Book from Revolutionary America.

Review

"Hannah Callender Sanson's diary is an important and neglected source in the history of eighteenth-century Philadelphia, in family and women's history, and in Quakerism. Susan E. Klepp and Karin Wulf bring deep learning, local knowledge, and current scholarly concerns to bear on this exciting modern edition. This book is a stirring and important contribution to our understanding of sensibility and American society in revolutionary times."

(Sarah Knott, Indiana University, author of Sensibility and the American Revolution)

"The Diary of Hannah Callender Sanson is truly a delightful and compelling read. Historians will be interested in Hannah Callender Sanson's comments on her work, the women and men she encounters, the many sociable conversations she describes, her life as a Quaker, and the many references to reading that pervade the diary. Susan E. Klepp and Karin Wulf both know a great deal about late eighteenth century Philadelphia and the lives of women therein, and it shows. They give readers a polished introduction to the diary and do an excellent job of succinctly establishing the necessary contexts, from married women's legal position to Quaker belief to contemporary expectations for courtship and marriage."

(Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University, author of Liberty's Daughters, Founding Mothers and Fathers, and In the Devil's Snare)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0801475139
• ISBN 13: 9780801475139
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376
• Editor: Klepp Susan E., Wulf Karin A.