The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson

by John Adams Vinton Vinton

The Female Review - Life of Deborah Sampson is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1866. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

Genres: Nonfiction

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Lígia Maria Mendes · Rating 1 out of 5]

The legacy of Deborah Sampson is a reminder that every day thousands of real-life Mulan fight not only society’s battles, but also their own. It must be really terrifying for a man to acknowledge that women are as strong and equal as them. Imagine if a woman learned that she can fight back or she can defend herself. It is no mystery that the real reason why men didn’t want to give women guns and an armor is because they feared what they might do. And Harnn was just one of those men. He wrote about her life as if he was observing a wild animal in the zoo, he exalted Sampson’s fierceness, but by choice decided to keep her behind bars because he feared her strength.

[Deborah Cleaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic.

The language is archaic and stilted and the author has a disheartening tendency to oration, but the story is still compellingly told. There are details here missing from other histories: the general shot in the back of the head who had time only to place a hand on the wound before dying; Washington astride a horse weeping as the captured British army marched before him. The heroine of the tale is a war hero, wounded in battle, performing surgery on herself to conceal her sex, meeting the doctor who discovered and preserved her secret until she was willing to disclose it.

[Stephanie Abney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Herman Mann stretched the truth beyond belief and maligned one of my favorite heroines of all time.

[Minosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the Just Teach One edition available free online with an extremely helpful introduction by Jodi Schorb. It's hard to give a text like this a rating because it's neither historically accurate nor is it particularly positive about women or gender nonconformity (let alone transness). HOWEVER, taken as a peculiar literary collaboration that had the specific and simultaneous goals of "get Deborah Sampson a pension" and "make sure no other young women decide to copy this," it's pretty fascinating. Mann ties himself in knots at times to explain how respectable Sampson is while also depicting the fascinating adventures they had as Robert Shurtliff - he gets SO flustered every time the topic of Shurtliff's flirtations with women come up. From a trans perspective, this is also very worth reading specifically to see how scenes of transition (chest binding, adapting to masc behavior, outing oneself and being outed) are depicted. The book is kind of slow to start but it gets much more interesting as you progress.

[isobel]

as animal love, on her part, was out of the question

or WAS IT

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had an interesting story to tell but presented it so dry that it became uninteresting. I think more description and dialogue would have benefitted the plot and kept the reader more engaged.