As her item record explains, Catharine Maria Sedgwick had a successful forty-year writing career of national and international renown during her lifetime. Catharine’s 1841 travelogue consisted entirely of her letters to “kindred at home” written during her fifteen-month trip through Europe. Due to the epistolary format of the volumes, 21st-century readers can hear Catharine’s voice, see through Catharine’s eyes, and feel her enthusiasm for life and travel before the invention and dissemination of the daguerreotype in 1839, which preceded modern photography.
In the “Postcards from the Past” series, American travel writer Amy Ravitz from H+A at Home and Away takes A Woman of the Century social media followers on a virtual trip through Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home. The series explores Catharine’s impressions of 19th century Europe recorded in her travel book along with illustrative images to bring the 21st-century reader the equivalent of a postcard from the past.
Please join us by reading the next posts in this exhibition and following the A Woman of the Century Facebook and Instagram pages for future installments.
Bibliography
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