Book description
The journal of Philadelphia Quaker Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker
(1735-1807) is perhaps the single most significant personal record of
eighteenth-century life in America from a woman's perspective. Drinker
wrote in her diary nearly continuously between 1758 and 1807, from two
years before her marriage to the night before her last illness. The
extraordinary span and sustained quality of the journal make it a
rewarding document for a multitude of historical purposes. One of the
most prolific early American diarists-her journal runs to thirty-six
manuscript volumes-Elizabeth Drinker saw English colonies evolve into
the American nation while Drinker herself changed from a young
unmarried woman into a wife, mother, and grandmother. Her journal
entries touch on every contemporary subject political, personal, and familial.
Focusing on different stages of Drinker's personal development
within the domestic context, this abridged edition highlights four
critical phases of her life cycle: youth and courtship, wife and
mother, middle age in years of crisis, and grandmother and family
elder. There is little that escaped Elizabeth Drinker's quill, and her
diary is a delight not only for the information it contains but also
for the way in which she conveys her world across the centuries.
"[Drinker's] diary, which spans the years 1758 to 1807, is
the most substantial woman's diary that survives from
eighteenth-century America; and it ranks with the diaries of Samuel
Sewall, William Byrd, Landon Carter, John Adams, and William Bentley
in its richness as a source for understanding the social and cultural
history of the period it covers."-American Historical Review
Elaine Forman Crane is Professor of History at Fordham University.
She is the author of Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell and
editor of the journal Early American Studies, the latter also available
from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
