Autobiography
Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway

This 1904 autobiography describes the life of an American proponent of anti-slavery, free religion, social reform and women's suffrage.

Moncure Daniel Conway (Author)

9781108050609, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 June 2012

416 pages, 1 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.4 cm, 0.53 kg

Published in 1904, three years before his death, Conway's Autobiography is a peaceful and introspective account of a compelling life. Born to a slave-owning Methodist family in Virginia, Conway (1832–1907) turned away from his roots to become a proponent of anti-slavery, free religion, reform and women's suffrage. Observing and becoming involved in the developments of late nineteenth-century religious, political, scientific, literary and artistic thought, he formed friendships with central figures of the age, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle, which feature in the work alongside his devoted family life. Volume 1 describes his childhood and education; antebellum Virginia and Maryland; Concord and Harvard with Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau; and Washington and Cincinnati on the eve of civil war. It also covers his arrival in England in 1863 and his first encounters at London's South Place Chapel and in the circles of social, legal and religious reform.

Dedication and preface
1. My own people
2. Our homestead
3. Our servants
4. Fredericksburg Academy
5. Dickinson College
6. Politics in Virginia
7. College life
8. Education and slavery
9. My early ministry
10. Rev. Dr Smith, apostle of slavery
11. Parting from Methodism
12. Summer at Concord
13. Concerts and theatres
14. Divinity school
15. First sermons at Washington
16. Ante-bellum Washington
17. The slavery issue in Washington
18. Settlement in Cincinnati
19. Unitarians and slavery
20. Art in Cincinnati
21. Abraham Lincoln in Cincinnati
22. 'The rejected stone'
23. Residence in Concord
24. Foreign complications
25. First interview with the Carlyles
26. English authors and the American war
27. Arrival of my family in England.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]