Writing Out My Heart

by Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Gifford, Carolyn De Swarte

• ISBN13: 9780252021398
• ISBN10: 0252021398
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

The journal of Frances E. Willard had been hidden away in a cupboard at the national headquarters of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and its importance eluded Willard's biographers. Writing Out My Heart publishes for the first time substantial portions of the forty-nine volumes rediscovered in 1982, opening a window on the remarkable inner life of this great public figure and casting her in a new light. No other female political leader of the period left a private record like this. Written during her teens, twenties, and fifties, the journal documents the creation of Frances Willard's self. At the same time, it often reads like a good novel. It stands as one of the most explicit and painful records in the nineteenth century of one woman's coming to terms with her love for women in a heterosexual world. Other sections reveal what impelled Willard to reform - the nature and depth of the religious dimension of her life - a dimension not yet adequately explored by any biographer. Here we see her growing commitment to the "cause of woman". The volumes written in her late middle age give insight into the years when, world famous, she was part of the transatlantic network of reform, battling ill health, dealing with controversy in the WCTU, and grieving for her mother, a lifelong figure of emotional support. This finale concludes one of the most fascinating of the journal's themes: the nineteenth-century confrontation with sickness and death.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xvii
Editorial Method	xxiii
Abbreviations	xxix
General Introduction	1	(28)
PART ONE
14 February 1859--28 March 1861
Introduction	29	(8)
Entries	37	(76)
PART TWO
31 March 1861--6 January 1863
Introduction	113	(6)
Entries	119	(80)
PART THREE
23 January 1863--27 May 1868
Introduction	199	(5)
Entries	204	(67)
PART FOUR
9 October 1868--28 September 1870
Introduction	271	(8)
Entries	279