Abigail Adams. Letters of Mrs. Adams. Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1840. 12mo. 2 volumes. Frontispiece. Original brown cloth gilt. Second edition. Sabin 264. 

A collection of selected correspondence penned by the second First Lady of the United States, Abigail Adams (1744-1818). Containing letters dated from 1761 to 1814, with the majority addressed to her husband, President John Adams (1735-1826).

Collected and edited with a biographical introduction by her grandson, Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886). Intending to illustrate the realities of the Adams family throughout the Revolutionary War, he focused especially on the power at which the home front helped to stoke the fires which would drive them to success: "The heroism of the females of the Revolution has gone from memory with the generation that witnessed it, and nothing, absolutely nothing, remains upon the ear of the young of the present day, but the faint echo of an expiring general tradition." This collection provides valuable insight into a woman's perspective during the Revolutionary War and the early Republic. 

[American Revolutionary War, American Revolution, Founding Fathers, Declaration of Independence, Colonial America, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe]