"In To Set This World Right, historian Sandra Harbert Petrulionis notes that when Henry David Thoreau set out on a highly principled but very criminal mission in the early morning of Dec. 3, 1859, he could have called on any number of his neighbors to take his place. It was the morning after John Brown was hanged for his role in the failed Harpers Ferry raid, and Thoreau was undertaking to transport Francis Meriam, one of the conspirators, to the South Acton railroad station, where he would board a train, eventually escaping into Canada."—Boston Sunday Globe, December 31, 2006
"Every student of American Transcendentalism should read this book; it teaches us how ordinary people helped transform U.S. politics, as well as influenced their more famous friends and neighbors. The book also testifies to the ways these women transgressed the boundary separating their 'separate sphere' of domesticity from the public sphere of political action and conscience."—John Carlos Rowe, University of Southern California, Emerson Society Papers, vol. 18, no. 1, spring 2007
"The author considers how Thoreau and others, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, helped to shape an antislavery consciousness in Concord. This New England town, according to Petrulionis, serves as a 'microcosm' of how the acceptance of abolitionism crossed race, class, and gender lines to become a formidable force in U.S. reform."—Choice
"To Set This World Right is an impressive work. Demonstrating mastery of a range of primary materials and secondary literatures, Petrulionis has produced a fascinating study for scholars interested in abolitionism, American literary studies, or antebellum U.S. history. Her book makes a significant contribution to a growing literature on the critical grassroots role that women played in the most important reform effort in nineteenth-century America, while also contextualizing the emerging antislavery commitment of several of the period's most eloquent voices."—Ethan J. Kytle, H-SHEAR, H-Net Reviews, July 2007
"Henry David Thoreau liked to boast that he marched to a different drummer, but when it came to protesting slavery, his mother, sisters, and aunts set the beat. As Sandra Harbert Petrulionis demonstrates in fine detail and lively prose, female abolitionists were the driving force behind the antislavery activism for which Concord, Massachusetts, became legendary in antebellum America. Spurning the expediency of politicians and the abstractions of Transcendentalists, the women of Concord labored tirelessly for three decades to protest the sin of slavery in a nation supposedly devoted to liberty and equality. In the town famous for the battle that launched the Revolutionary War, women fired their own 'shot heard round the world' in the protracted struggle to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. In charting their sacrifices and contributions, Petrulionis restores the women of Concord to their rightful role in the contest against slavery and the shaping of the New England tradition of reform."—Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut, author of The Minutemen and Their World
"In To Set This World Right Sandra Harbert Petrulionis has written a vivid account of the growth of the antislavery movement in one of America's most historic and influential communities, Concord, Massachusetts. She describes how Henry David Thoreau's abolitionist views were grounded in and nurtured by the community's active reform culture, and the work of several dedicated political activists. Petrulionis's mastery of the letters, journals, newspapers, and other archival documents that record Concord's antislavery past is impressive, and she finds in these materials an engaging—and inspiring—narrative of progressive political commitment and achievement."—David M. Robinson, author of Natural Life: Thoreau's Worldly Transcendentalism
"To Set This World Right is the finest and most detailed account of the essential role played by women in the grassroots effort to promote the cause of antislavery. Sandra Harbert Petrulionis not only presents the efforts of largely unknown figures such as Mary Merrick Brooks but also describes the activities of the women in the Thoreau and Emerson households, who eventually persuaded Thoreau and Emerson to lend their powerful voices to the controversial cause."—Len Gougeon, University of Scranton, coeditor of Emerson's Antislavery Writings
"It is a refreshing change to read an elegantly crafted book which understands that writers like Emerson lived in a precise place and time and were influenced by the world around them. In addition, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis writes very well."—Douglas Egerton, LeMoyne College, author of Rebels, Reformers, and Revolutionaries
