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Julia's Journals: The Private Diaries

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Julia Ward Howe Journal. Typescript in three boxes. The original of this journal is now at the Houghton (Maine Historical Society?). This typescript was prepared at the expense of Henry Marion Howe by Miss Ethel Cochrane for LER's use in writing Julia Ward Howe, the two-volume biography of their mother. LER has marked passages which were later taken out by the typist and interpolated into the text by LER, a fascinating glimpse into the working procedures of the author LER. Passges marked WWG were later used when LER edited The Walk With God by Julia Ward Howe (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1919).

This journal typescript is clearly bowdlerized, and the evidence to this conclusion may be traced in three publications. The passages omitted concern JWH's marital problems with SGH. The first published account of the marital problems appeared in Louise Hall Tharp, Three Saints and a Sinner (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956). RR as holder of the copyright because she was literary executor of LER's estate delayed publication for a year until a compromise could be negotiated (conversation the present compiler had with RCW, December 1988). Secondly, Deborah Pickman Clifford, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Biogaphy of Julia Ward Howe (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979) examined the Howe Papers at the Houghton through permission of LEP (same individual who became executrix of the estate of LEW and who gave the present collection to the GPL). Clifford cites journal entries for 23 Nov. and 8 and 31 December 1875 which concern the request by SGH for divorce, and these passages do not appear in the present typescript.

Incidentally, the dust jacket identifies Deborah Clifford as a descendant of JWH. This is misleading: Deborah Clifford is a collateral descendant through her direct descent from Samuel Ward IV and the Chandler family (information also gleaned from RCW in Dec. 1988). Thirdly, Anne Stokes Alexander, "Laura E. Richards, 1850-1943: A Critical Biography," a doctoral dissertation presented at Columbia University in 1979 traces much of the same biographical episodes in the life of JWH by citation to the journal° RCW and LEP have indicated in private conversation to the present compiler that they feel any restrictions the family once imposed upon examination of what was once considered private and sensitive matter should no longer be enforced.

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