Liberty Bell (annual)

The Liberty Bell, by Friends of Freedom, was an annual abolitionist gift book, edited and published by Maria Weston Chapman, to be sold or gifted to participants in the National Anti-Slavery Bazaar organized by the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Named after the symbol of the American Revolution, it was published nearly every year from 1839 to 1858.

In 1834 Maria Chapman of Boston, Massachusetts, her sisters Caroline, Anne, Deborah, and eight other women formed the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society as part of their abolitionist activities. The Anti-Slavery Fair, first held in Boston in 1834, was a way to raise money for the society's work. Maria and her sister Anne were chief organizers of the fairs, which were popular Boston social events.

The fairs organizers raised thousands of dollars a year by selling things such as "ladies' aprons, cloaks, cuffs, bags, purses," "knitted quilts," "inkstands," "Ohio cheese," and "dolls in hundreds of every size, price, material, and costume." In 1839 these items were joined by The Liberty Bell, modeled after the fashionable and popular gift books of the time. The book was sold to fair attendees and given without cost to the fair workers, as an acknowledgement of contribution to the abolitionist cause and token of the occasion. Publication continued every year until 1846, and intermittently until 1859's edition, produced in 1858. (1840, 1850, 1855, and 1857 were missed) As with many gift books, publication actually occurred late in the year prior to the date of the book, except for the very first (1839) edition. The next edition was thus dated 1841.

As editor, Maria Chapman wrote much of the content (prose, essays, poetry) herself and pressed her sisters for material. She also solicited contributions from authors such as Lydia Maria Child, Eliza Cabot Follen, Wendell Phillips, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Lucretia Mott William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Martineau, among them many of the leading abolitionist, or abolitionist sympathizing writers of New England.

...
Wikipedia