subject: Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage. A Review [print this page] Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage / by Edith Belle Gelles (Wm. Morrow, 2009) Hardcover, 339 p. ISBN 9780061353871
Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage amply demonstrates that strong and influential First Ladies did not begin with Eleanor Roosevelt. John Adams, of course, was one of America's Founding Fathers, men who often seem both larger than life and not really quite people. Abigail surely counts as a Founding Mother. Both of them have been the subjects of biographies before, but Abigail & John is the first to look at them together as a married couple.
The Adams' marriage persisted for 54 years, in spite of long periods of separation when John was on his various political and diplomatic missions. He was even away during the birth of one of their children. Regardless of his well-known vanity and stubbornness, which strained many of his relationships, their marriage demonstrates enduring mutual love, admiration, trust, and respect.
Edith Belle Gelles did not set out to write a standard history of an important political figure and his supportive wife. What she found in their letters and notes to each other over the entire length of their relationship was as much a love story as historical source material. She tells how Abigail used John's extensive library to teach herself about important literature, how she took care of family business in Massachusetts during John's frequent absences, and how she supported the underlying values inherent in John's most controversial legislation (the Aliens and Sedition Acts). More than that, she shows how both of them responded to the various child-rearing concerns, health problems, financial setbacks, and occasional tragedies that occur over all long-lasting marriages.
Although Gelles has impeccable credentials as a professional historian, Abigail & John does not read like an academic treatise. Her focus on the love story and the marriage produced a book more akin to a novel, although not at all fictionalized. A work of scholarship to be sure, Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage is a book to read, reread, and enjoy, not merely study. All-Purpose Guru Alert specializes in selecting good books and offering one title per day. Be sure to visit regularly.
