Welcome

[Trudy Krisher]

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for your warm welcome and your comments on my book about Fanny Seward.

Yes, Susan, I wish it could have been longer, too. It was 600 pages (!) in manuscript, and naturally publishers were leery. I am hoping that I can publish journal articles at some point using the material I had to leave out.

Eva, Fanny's education is explored in the book, and she was definitely encouraged to have political views. Her views on abolition were strong, but she had largely a literary, not a political sensibility.

Linda, Fanny does not mention Powell anywhere in her diaries other than in a general way in referring to the attackers as fiends and villians. In keeping with her character, her whole focus was on her family. Because her mother was so devastated by the attack and her brother and father's health so precarious, it's understandable that her energies were focused on healing them. My take on Mrs. Seward's final illness is that her health had been precarious for a long time prior to her return to Washington to help her husband after the carriage accident; the cascade of tragic events that followed simply sapped her remaining strength. I never found a "diagnosis" of the actual cause of her death; in fact, that's a topic for someone's dissertation: an examination of Frances Seward's medical history with attention to how much was physiological and how much psychological.

The warm welcomes are much appreciated. Be patient with my forum absences, as I spend time mostly writing and am not a particularly active forum participant on any venue.