A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

laurel thatcher ulrich

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, "A truly talented historian unravels the fascinating life of a community that is so foreign, and yet so similar to our own" ( The New York Times Book Review).

Between 1785 and 1812 a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich gives us an intimate and densely imagined portrait, not only of the industrious and reticent Martha Ballard but of her society. At once lively and impeccably scholarly, A Midwife's Tale is a triumph of history on a human scale.

Genres historynonfictionbiographyamerican historyhistoricalmemoirwomensfeminismbiography memoirbook club

444 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1990

Literary awards

pulitzer prize, bancroft prize, aha prize in american history, joan kelly memorial prize in womens history,

Places

hallowell maine,

This edition

Format: 444 pages, Paperback
Published: December 22, 1991 by Vintage Books
ISBN: 9780679733768
ASIN: 0679733760
Language: English

About the author

laurel thatcher ulrich

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University. She is the author of Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Early New England, 1650-1750 (1982) and A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1990) which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991 and became the basis of a PBS documentary. In The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Making of an American Myth (2001), she has incorporated museum-based research as well as more traditional archival work. Her most recent book is Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History (2007). Her major fields of interest are early American social history, women's history, and material culture. Professor Ulrich's work is featured on the web at www.dohistory.org and www.randomhouse.com.

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~amciv/fac...