TO BE YOUNG WAS VERY HEAVEN

by Marian Lawrence Peabody ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 1967

Marian Lawrence Peabody was born in Boston on the centennial of the American Revolution (her father took time from the proceedings to watch the passing parade). She grew up in Cambridge, with summers in Nahant, then Bar Harbor. Her father was consecrated as Bishop of Massachusetts in the fall of the year she ""came out."" As Marian Lawrence she attended art school, pursued good works, enjoyed the gay and innocent society of Boston. She went to Europe and the West, and South for civil rights, then called ""the colored question."" When President Teddy Roosevelt came to Cambridge to attend his twenty-fifth reunion, she and her family were on hand to greet him. In 1906, just short of thirty-one, she married Harold Peabody, and as she set sail for England after her wedding night, she ""felt happy and contented and had given up fighting fate."" This fight is not evident in what has gone before: all that can be said for or against Mrs. Peabody and her book is that, except for her correspondence with an era, she is totally unexceptional; her nice girl's diary has not a glimmer of intellect or particular perceptiveness, and promises only to be of regional or faintly sociological interest.

Pub Date: May 29, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1967

Categories: NONFICTION