Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880)Child was an abolitionist, reformer, and one of America's first women of letters. She published an early antislavery book, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), that created a furor in Boston and helped attract many male abolitionists to the cause who would later become famous. She was on the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society, edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1841-1843), and became an increasingly outspoken proponent of emancipation as the Civil War approached.