Sarah Kemble Knight

Sarah Kemble Knight ( born April 19, 1666 Boston, Massachusetts, † December 25, 1727 in Norwalk, Connecticut) was a business woman in the colony of New England.

She was born as the daughter of Boston merchant Thomas Kemble and his wife in civil relations. She married the ship's captain, Richard Knight. After his death (probably around the year 1703) she worked as a teacher, dealer, broker, economist and business consultant, to feed their family. In 1706 she opened a school in Boston; to their pupils was Samuel Mather, possibly Benjamin Franklin. In 1713 she settled in Norwalk, where she came into conflict with the law, because they had Indians sold liquor.

1825 a fragment of her diary about a 1704 made ​​business trip from Boston via New Haven to New York was first printed, edited by Theodore Dwight. It has since been reprinted many times and is particularly important for the American literary and cultural history of the colonial period, an important historical document. George Parker Winship, the editor of a 1920 launched reprinting, ruled Knights diary is the " truest image" of New England's colonial society that was preserved for posterity. While the Knights contemporaries were still heavily influenced by the Puritan ethos, Knights is kept Report humorous style.

In the episodic diary entries, she reports on the vicissitudes of the journey on foot and on horseback, and of the difficulties which they had to defend himself as a woman traveling alone, encounters with fellow travelers, New England settlers and Native Americans, and provides an insight into the manners and customs the colonial society. Because they, unlike the scholarly writings of the time held the everyday language of the colonists, her diary is also for linguists of interest.

Text output

  • The Journal of Madam Knight. Hesperides Press, 2006. ISBN 1406796425

Secondary literature

  • Mary McAleer Balkun: Sarah Kemble Knight and the construction of the American self In: Women's Studies 28:1, 1998.
  • Sargent Bush, Jr.: Sarah Kemble Knight ( 1666-1727 ). In: Legacy, 12:2, 1995.
  • Peter Kratzke: Sarah Kemble Knight's polemical landscape. In: CEA Critic 65:3, 2003.
  • Alan Margolies: The Editing and Publication of The Journal of Madam Knight. In: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 58, 1964.
  • Peter Thorpe: Sarah Kemble Knight and the picaresque tradition. In: College Language Association Journal 10, 1966.
  • Author
  • Diary
  • Literature (18th century)
  • Literature ( English )
  • Person ( colonial history of North America )
  • British colonial history ( America)
  • Person ( Boston)
  • Born in 1666
  • Died in 1727
  • Woman
Norwalk (Connecticut) Theodore Dwight (elder) Integrated Authority File
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