Abigail Adams

Winner of the Bancroft Prize The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice American Heritage, Best of 2009 In this vivid new biography of Abigail Adams, the most illustrious woman of the founding era, Bancroft Award–winning historian Woody Holton offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Adams’s life story and of women’s roles in the creation of the republic. Using previously overlooked documents from numerous archives, Abigail Adams shows that the wife of the second president of the United States was far more charismatic and influential than historians have realized. One of the finest writers of her age, Adams passionately campaigned for women’s education, denounced sex discrimination, and matched wits not only with her brilliant husband, John, but with Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. When male Patriots ignored her famous appeal to "Remember the Ladies," she accomplished her own personal declaration of independence: Defying centuries of legislation that assigned married women’s property to their husbands, she amassed a fortune in her own name. Adams’s life story encapsulates the history of the founding era, for she defined herself in relation to the people she loved or hated (she was never neutral), a cast of characters that included her mother and sisters; Benjamin Franklin and James Lovell, her husband’s bawdy congressional colleagues; Phoebe Abdee, her father’s former slave; her financially naïve husband; and her son John Quincy. At once epic and intimate, Abigail Adams, sheds light on a complicated, fascinating woman, one of the most beloved figures of American history.

Abigail Adams was an extraordinary woman who witnessed the gathering storm of the American Revolution and saw the battle of Bunker Hill from a hilltop near her home. Through her letters to friends and family, Abigail Adams lives in history--and now in this award-winning biography by Natalie Bober. Black & white illustrations .

Abigail Adams was a strong woman far ahead of her time. She urged her husband, President John Adams, to "remember the ladies" and despite having no formal education herself, she later advocated for equal education in public schools for both boys and girls. She was also the first First Lady to live in the White House! This biography tells the story of Abigail Adams and her role in America's Revolutionary War period.

Abigail Adams was an unusually accomplished letter writer. Spirited and insightful, her correspondence offers a unique vantage on historical events in which her family played so prominent a role, while bringing vividly to life the everyday experience of American women in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Here are 430 letters—more than a hundred published for the first time—to John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Mercy Otis Warren, James and Dolley Madison, and Martha Washington, among many others. Including her famous call to “Remember the Ladies,” letters from the 1760s and 1770s offer an unrivalled portrait of the American Revolution on the home front. Travel to Europe in the 1780s opens a grand new field for her talents as social commentator and political advisor while her roles as vice presidential and presidential wife place her at the very heart of the nation’s founding. Also included are a chronology of Adams’s life, detailed notes, and extensively researched family trees. This volume is published simultaneously with John Adams: Writings from the New Nation 1784–1826, the third and final volume in the Library of America John Adams edition. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Spanning nearly forty years, the letters collected in this volume form the most significant correspondence—and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring partnerships—in American history.

A simple, illustrated biography of one of America's most famous couples.

Wife of one president and mother of another, Abigail Adams was an extraordinary woman living at an extraordinary time in American history. A tireless letter writer and diarist, her penetrating and often caustic impressions of most of the major persons of her day--including Ben Franklin, George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and King George III, among others--provide one of the best first-hand accounts of the American Revolution. This biography, researched and written over a fourteen-year period, is a fascinating portrait of a brilliant woman at the center of the founding of the American republic.