The Lowell Offering
In October 1840, the Reverend Abel Charles Thomas of the First Universalist Church organized a monthly publication by and for the Lowell girls. As the magazine grew in popularity, women contributed poems, ballads, essays and fiction – often using their characters to report on conditions and situations in their lives.
The Offering's contents were by turns serious and farcical. In a letter in the first issue, "A Letter about Old Maids", the author suggested that "sisters, spinsters, lay-nuns, & c" were an essential component of God's "wise design". Later issues – particularly in the wake of labor unrest in the factories – included an article about the value of organizing and an essay about suicide among the Lowell girls.
Read more about this topic: Lowell Mill Girls
Famous quotes containing the word lowell:
“Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season’s youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep ‘neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)