“HOW CAN ANYBODY BE IMPATIENT TO QUIT SUCH A BEAUTIFUL WORLD?”:
Hannah Adams and Her Compendium (1784)
Born in Massachusetts in 1755, Adams was a frail child, unable to go to school and often house-bound. Fortunately like her father, the aptly nicknamed Thomas “Book” Adams, she loved to read, so much of her childhood was spent in the company of books. During the Revolution, a boarder at her family’s home loaned her a copy of An Historical Dictionary of All Religions from the Creation of the World to This Perfect Time, written in 1742 by an English clergyman, Thomas Broughton. Adams had always been interested in religion, but reading this dictionary fired her imagination and her curiosity.
So in 1778, she began gathering material from her studies for inclusion in a reference book on the world’s religions. Disturbed by her sources’ typically Christian-biased depiction of “heathen” religions, she determined to be as even-handed and accurate as possible in her reporting. Though she tried her hardest, things didn’t always work out that way. Some of her opinions were anything but objective–“heathen nations” performed “obscene and ridiculous ceremonies”–but despite its scholarly shortcomings, her book was a step in the right direction.
The Compendium’s first edition of 400 copies flew off the shelves, though the printer reportedly conned her father and kept all the profits. In the hassle over money, Adams nearly suffered a nervous breakdown, but she learned an important lesson about the cut-throat business side of writing. With the help of James Freeman, a Unitarian minister (who, in 1787, became head of the first Unitarian church in America), she earned a small profit from the book’s second edition in 1791.
Two more editions followed, in 1801 and 1817, re-titled A View of Religion in Two Parts. Part I Containing an Alphabetical etc., part II Containing a Brief Account of the Different Schemes of Religion Now Embraced Among Mankind. The Whole Collected from the Best Authors, Ancient and Modern. She dedicated this last edition to John Adams, a distant relative, who years before had hosted her in Boston for a few weeks. The ex-President wrote approvingly of their common ancestry:
I should think a descent from a line of virtuous, independent New England farmers, for one hundred and sixty years, was a better foundation [for family pride] than a descent through royal or titled scoundrels ever since the flood.
Hannah Adams is credited with being the first American female–and possibly the first American writer, period–to earn a living, albeit a modest one, from writing. It appears that “modest” is a word that describes her to a “T.” She never married and seems to have passed most of her life in libraries. She was, though, a valued house guest on a rather circumscribed New England celebrity writer circuit, admired by women not only for her literary accomplishments but for her relatively liberated ways. She wrote other books besides her Compendium, among them History of New England (1799), Evidences of Christianity (1801), The Truth and Excellence of the Christian Religion (1804), History of the Jews (1812), and Letters on the Gospels (1826)
In failing health she asked a visitor, “How can anybody be impatient to quit such a beautiful world?” She died one month later, in December 1831.
(Incomplete)
Born in Massachusetts in 1755, Adams was a frail child, unable to go to school and often house-bound. Fortunately like her father, the aptly nicknamed Thomas “Book” Adams, she loved to read, so much of her childhood was spent in the company of books. During the Revolution, a boarder at her family’s home loaned her a copy of An Historical Dictionary of All Religions from the Creation of the World to This Perfect Time, written in 1742 by an English clergyman, Thomas Broughton. Adams had always been interested in religion, but reading this dictionary fired her imagination and her curiosity.
So in 1778, she began gathering material from her studies for inclusion in a reference book on the world’s religions. Disturbed by her sources’ typically Christian-biased depiction of “heathen” religions, she determined to be as even-handed and accurate as possible in her reporting. Though she tried her hardest, things didn’t always work out that way. Some of her opinions were anything but objective–“heathen nations” performed “obscene and ridiculous ceremonies”–but despite its scholarly shortcomings, her book was a step in the right direction.
The Compendium’s first edition of 400 copies flew off the shelves, though the printer reportedly conned her father and kept all the profits. In the hassle over money, Adams nearly suffered a nervous breakdown, but she learned an important lesson about the cut-throat business side of writing. With the help of James Freeman, a Unitarian minister (who, in 1787, became head of the first Unitarian church in America), she earned a small profit from the book’s second edition in 1791.
Two more editions followed, in 1801 and 1817, re-titled A View of Religion in Two Parts. Part I Containing an Alphabetical etc., part II Containing a Brief Account of the Different Schemes of Religion Now Embraced Among Mankind. The Whole Collected from the Best Authors, Ancient and Modern. She dedicated this last edition to John Adams, a distant relative, who years before had hosted her in Boston for a few weeks. The ex-President wrote approvingly of their common ancestry:
I should think a descent from a line of virtuous, independent New England farmers, for one hundred and sixty years, was a better foundation [for family pride] than a descent through royal or titled scoundrels ever since the flood.
Hannah Adams is credited with being the first American female–and possibly the first American writer, period–to earn a living, albeit a modest one, from writing. It appears that “modest” is a word that describes her to a “T.” She never married and seems to have passed most of her life in libraries. She was, though, a valued house guest on a rather circumscribed New England celebrity writer circuit, admired by women not only for her literary accomplishments but for her relatively liberated ways. She wrote other books besides her Compendium, among them History of New England (1799), Evidences of Christianity (1801), The Truth and Excellence of the Christian Religion (1804), History of the Jews (1812), and Letters on the Gospels (1826)
In failing health she asked a visitor, “How can anybody be impatient to quit such a beautiful world?” She died one month later, in December 1831.
(Incomplete)
