America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer

When Fredrika Bremer arrived in New York from Sweden in October 1849, she was already famous throughout America for her novels and for her reformist efforts in Sweden. Thus there was no shortage of invitations, and she met with the leading lights of American culture, along with countless lesser-known people. Her main objective was to see the effect of democratic institutions on society. In her two years in America, she toured New England and met Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving; visited Shaker and Quaker communities in Mid-Atlantic states; conversed with Senators in Washington, DC, examined conditions of slaves in the South; and toured Scandinavian frontier communities in the Midwest. She also investigated America's prisons, and everywhere noted the legal status and social situations of women. Throughout her American travels, which ended in September 1851, she reported back all that she saw in letters to her sister. She then edited those letters and published them in a 1,300 page volume; "Homes of the New World: Impressions of America". In 1924 the American-Scandinavian Foundation published a selection of the letters in this edition. (Summary by Ted Lienhart) (8 hr 32 min)