A Midwife's Tale

Name: A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
ISBN: 9780679733768

The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Susan Ericksen

1990·444 pages·Nonfiction

Biography Historical Fiction

memoir

Pulitzer Prize (1991) · Nominee

“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

Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, 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.

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A Midwife's Tale

The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Susan Ericksen

Pulitzer Prize (1991) · Nominee

Year

1990

Pages

444

Type

Nonfiction

Biography Historical Fiction History & Politics

Praise

“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