Throughout more than 54 years of marriage, she made tangible contributions to her family's welfare, her husband's career, and perhaps in some degree to the course of history.Ībigail's pen seems never to have been far from hand.
Abigail had the primary domestic role, yet she was involved to a remarkable degree in the intellectual and political life of her husband.ĭuring the years that he was away helping to launch and then serve the new nation, Abigail managed their farm, raised and educated four children, and kept up an informative correspondence, reporting major news events as well as daily details. In the Adamses marriage, she sees a partnership of equals. When Levin looks at the life of this 18th-century woman from a late 20th-century perspective, she finds contemporary relevance in the familiar facts. Like history, biography reflects the bias of the biographer and the time in which it is written. The portrait she presents is also a picture of a period and its major historical events and famous political figures. In addition to the vast collection of primary sources on the Adamses, she searched other manuscripts, newspapers, and histories, and read some of the books that Abigail read to find details that give impressive breadth and depth to her account. Levin spent 16 years researching and writing her book.
It's hard to imagine one that could be more comprehensive. Now Phyllis Lee Levin, a former reporter, editor, and ``Parent & Child'' columnist for the New York Times, has written what is advertised as the ``definitive'' biography of Abigail Adams. And no biographer of John Adams can omit his ``best friend.'' Numerous short sketches, collections of anecdotes about notable figures, or other tributes to famous American women feature the second First Lady. Abigail Adams is the subject of at least four previous full-length biographies in this century - two written since the publication of the Adams papers in the 1970s.
She lived in truly revolutionary times and left thousands of letters recording her life and thoughts.įirst published in 1840, the wartime letters of Abigail and John Adams - with a memoir by her grandson Charles Francis Adams - later became a best seller in an 1876 centenary edition still found on library shelves. Most notable as the wife of the second President of the United States and mother of the sixth, she is also the ancestor of generations of distinguished scholars and historians. Abigail Adams is not an unknown American heroine.
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