Valiant Friend: The Life of Lucretia Mott

Rating:
Summary: Most impressively balanced
Review: Maraget Hope Bacon, a leading authority on the Quakers, has done a most impressive job with this biography of Lucretia Mott, a notable Quaker social activist of the nineteenth century.

The book, on the whole, can be described as most impressive in terms of its sheer readability and clarity: we clearly see the contradictions inherent in Quakerism during the time and how she had to face them. Lucretia Mott is shown to be a woman who was exceptionally capable of dealing with criticisms from the Quaker leadership of her childhood and to take up the initiative herself when she believed she was forced to by sheer injustice. All parts of her life are described quite thoroughly but lightly: there is a notable absence of over-dense writing to clutter the book.

Whilst none of the writing is remarkably insightful because Bacon does not go into great detail (as, say, Jean McMahon-Humez does) about the realities of life in a Quaker society, the book still comes across as a good biography. If you want to know where the modern-day women's and peace movements came from, this book should be read.