ABSTRACT
Few contemporary writers, with the exception perhaps of Stephen King or Judith Krantz, enjoy the kind of financially lucrative literary celebrity that nineteenth-century author Lydia Maria Child did for most of her lengthy career as a popular professional writer, for Americans nowadays usually reserve celebrity status for figures in the movie and music industries—the Madonnas, Julia Robertses, and Arnold Schwarzeneggers. As early as the 1870s, critics were beginning to point out Child’s significant contributions to American literature. Writer and editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, for example, comments in a biographical sketch of his friend: It is needless to debate whether she did the greatest or most permanent work in any especial department of literature, since she did pioneer work in so many. Child’s newspaper writing, usually in the form of informal sketches that might best be described as opinion pieces or personal essays, deserves more attention because Child was a pioneer in establishing an American women’s tradition for essay writing.
