Making available what is perhaps the longest-running diary in existence, the Selected Journals of Caroline Healey Dall offers what arguably is the most complete account we have of a 19th-century American woman's life. Dall (1822-1912), a participant in the transcendentalist, abolitionist, women?s rights, and social science movements, filled her journals with intelligent reflections and keen analysis of her world.

Volume 1, 1838-1855, begins with her adolescence at Beacon Hill and documents her work as a teacher and reformer, as well as her marriage and separation from her husband, who left to become a missionary in India.  The entries presented here address a wide range of topics, including family and social rituals and interactions; the routines of "woman's work"; illnesses, both physical and mental, and their treatment; examples of cross-class and cross-race relations; and the larger world of business, politics, literature, reform, war, religion, and science. In detailing Dall's emotional, intellectual, and spiritual development, the journals also convey a compelling personal story.

Helen R. Deese is Caroline Healey Dall Editor for the Massachusetts Historical Society, Professor of English Emerita at Tennessee Technological University, and the editor of Jones Very: The Complete Poems