CHILD, LYDIA MARIA. 1802-1880.

CHILD, LYDIA MARIA. 1802-1880.
3 Autograph Poems, "Lines to the Memory of Ellis Gray Loring, soon after his death...," "Lines Written May 24th, 1865," and "Lines to L.M. Child, in answer to the proceeding, by John G Whittier," 8 pp total, numbered by Child, 166 x 111 mm, folds;
WITH: Autograph Letter Signed ("L. Maria Child") to William Page Andrews, discussing his translation of Goethe, and enclosing the autograph poems, 2 pp total, 166 x 111 mm, Wayland, April 30th, [after 1870,] creases.

Lydia Maria Childs was a social reformer, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and a prolific writer. The autograph poems represent the full cycle of her tribute to her lifelong friend and fellow abolitionist Ellis Gray Loring, including in her hand the famous Whittier response to her mourning. The poems here offer new insight into the timeline of her composition.

The letter and its enclosures appear to have been sent to her young friend William Page Andrews, who provided a sonnet upon her burial. She writes: "I thank you for your translation of Goethe. You are not old enough to have a realizing sense of the ideas that flowed from his experience. You can imagine how life may seem to the old, but not until the Spirits of the Departed multiply around you, as the years pass on, will you really feel that 'what has vanished seems the real existence.'"