This second volume of selections from Caroline Healey Dall’s diary extends her story into the crucial period of her central role in the American women’s movement and her position as a founder of the American Social Science Association. These entries convey the Civil War, the tragedy of Lincoln’s assassination, and other national events from the viewpoint of a strongly partisan New Englander. Dall’s text also reveals her personal experience as a single mother who emerges from the shock of her husband’s departure to form a new identity as writer, lecturer, and reformer. An eloquent woman of sharp intelligence, positioned at the centre of New England cultural and political events, Dall provides us with an extraordinary perspective on the era in which she—this ""strangely gifted"" but flawed and emotionally vulnerable woman—lived.

Distributed for the Massachusetts Historical Society.