Dear Abigail

December 16, 2013
In highlighting sorority, Jacobs (Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft) opens a new window on the familiar life of Abigail Adams, wife of American Revolution leader and second President of the United States, John. The most well-known of the three sisters, she was born Abigail Smith in 1744, three years after her elder sister, Mary, and six years before her younger sister, Elizabeth. Their brother, William, was born in 1746 and named for their father, a Congregationalist minister. The family resided in Weymouth, Mass., where William supplemented his preacher’s salary by farming. Matriarch Elizabeth Smith tutored her daughters in housewifery and community charity, as well as reading, writing, mathematics, and Enlightenment precepts. In 1762 Mary wed Richard Cranch, who was 15 years her senior, self-educated, and unlucky in business. Abigail followed her sister into matrimony two years later, marrying the pugnacious young attorney John Adams. Cycles of pregnancy and childbirth bound Mary and Abigail even closer than they had been growing up. By the time young Elizabeth married Congregationalist minister John Shaw in 1777, the Revolution was well underway. Deftly weaving military and political events of the Revolutionary period with the personal lives of these fascinating sisters, Jacobs has crafted a riveting curl-up-by-the-fireside story. Illus.

January 1, 2014
Historical ramble through the Revolutionary era via middle sister and intermediary Abigail Adams (1744-1818), who married best. The three Smith sisters of Weymouth, Mass., were inseparable growing up under their minister father and thrifty, charitable mother, and they were remarkably well-educated, as demonstrated by the copious, frequent letters they exchanged throughout their long lives. Liberally excerpted by Jacobs (Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, 2001, etc.), the letters allow readers to plunge into the voices and milieus of these lively characters, who nonetheless were relegated to the sidelines, observing the great events of the new nation unfold while their husbands got to strut about the stage--underscoring how important it was to marry well. Mary, the oldest sister, caught the interest of the girls' tutor, Richard Cranch, due to her "intelligence--not to mention her beauty and goodness," and "their passion quickened as he took it upon himself to initiate all three young women into the pleasures of Enlightenment philosophy, epistolary novels, Milton, Pope, Shakespeare, and also some French." However, Cranch did not pan out well as a scholarly fabricator and farmer, relegating Mary to a life of much scrimping, drudgery and childbearing. Youngest sister Elizabeth, of "keen sensibility and high spirits," was fairly beaten down by her marriage to drunkard Calvinist John Shaw. Abigail, in contrast, married the imperious fireball John Adams, not exactly handsome but brilliant and ironically humorous and with wit to match Abigail's own; her feminist writing, both to husband and sisters, crackles off the page. Readers will cheer when she is finally goaded out of her enforced provincialism by the need to join her husband in his diplomatic mission to Paris in 1784. An intimate, deeply engaging method of following historic events.

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January 1, 2014
Though Abigail Adams is a perennially popular historical subject, little has been written about her two accomplished sisters, Mary Cranch and Elizabeth Shaw Peabody. This triple biography corrects that oversight by recounting the lives of the three Smith sisters, utilizing their private journals and the copious letters they wrote to each other over the course of their lifetimes to tell their collective story. Intelligent, well educated, opinionated, and informed, they not only provided each other with comfort, advice, and instruction but they also served as perceptive eyewitnesses to historical events on a grand scale. Though severely circumscribed by gender, time, and place, they overcame societal strictures by managing to carve out meaningful roles for themselves in their marriages and beyond. Colonial America, the Revolutionary War era, and the fledgling state of a new nation come to life via the pens of these remarkably prolific, loving, and observant sisters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2013

In the mid-1700s, three sisters--Mary, Abigail, and Betsy--where born into a prominent Boston family and given an education unusual for the time. One of them grew up to be Abigail Adams, our second First Lady. The three sisters communicated regularly through skillfully wrought letters, which with their diaries and missives to their husbands and children serve as the basis for this truly entertaining-sounding multibio.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2014

Among the many biographies--and collections of the letters--of Abigail Smith Adams, this one by Jacobs (Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft) uniquely focuses on the interconnectedness of Adams with her sisters, Mary Smith Cranch and Elizabeth "Betsy" Smith Shaw Peabody. Jacobs bases her study on their lifelong correspondence. They shared private thoughts on everything from courtship, marriage, and child rearing to philosophical, economic, and political issues. Jacobs makes evident the intense familial bond they had with one another, their spouses, and children as they endured grave illness, isolation, financial hardship, and the frustration of being thinking women in a man's world where intelligent, educated women were discouraged from engaging in substantive communication on nondomestic issues. Letter writing for these self-sacrificing and resilient sisters offered opportunities for sharing family news but also provided an essential forum with like-minded, trusted, supportive females, allowing them a brief respite from mundane yet stressful domesticity. Jacobs uses the sisters' letters to show the women circumventing cultural restrictions in order to assert their influence within and beyond their domestic spheres. VERDICT This sympathetic and engaging treatment of Abigail Adams and her close-knit family will be valued by all readers. It will be of particular interest to devotees of women's studies and early American history.--Margaret Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.