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I RUTH: Autobiography of a Marriage by Ruth Painter Randall

I RUTH: Autobiography of a Marriage

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Pub Date: Aug. 15th, 1968
Publisher: Little, Brown

The Self-Told Story of the Woman Who Married the Great Lincoln Scholar, James G. Randall, and Through Her Interest in His Work Became a Lincoln Author Herself"" reads the title page, and the old-fashioned phrasing reflects the tone of the book as aptly as the words summarize the contents. Aside from the obvious parallel to Mrs. Randall's chronicles of the distaff side of several famous marriages (I Mary, I Vancssa, I Jessic, etc.), this is an unlikely juvenile; the good it might do -- in embodying values and attitudes fast disappearing, in recording the satisfactions of shared scholarship and concurrent publication -- is offset by the profusion of Painter family anecdotes in the first half, the virtual absence of conflict or drama throughout. Mrs. Randall is always the gracious lady; if she was ever irascible or impatient, it doesn't show: the cloth is starched, the face is unruffled.