Lowell Offering

The Offering was initially organized in 1840 by the Reverend Abel Charles Thomas (1807–1880) pastor of the SecondFloyd, Benjamin, and Leonard Huntress. The Lowell Directory: Containing Names of the Inhabitants, Their Occupation, Places of Business & Dwelling Houses: : with an Almanac. : City Register, Streets and Corporations, Ward Boundaries, City Officers, Public Offices, Banks, Incorporated Companies, Societies, : and Other Useful Information. Lowell: Leonard Huntress, Printer, 1840, [https://archive.org/stream/lowellmassachuse1840floy#page/28/mode/2up p. 28] Universalist Church. From October 1840 to March 1841, it consisted of articles from many of the local improvement circles or literary societies. Later, it became broader in scope and received more spontaneous contributions from Lowell's female textile workers. The Offering had hundreds of subscribers and supporters from throughout New England, United States, and among foreign visitors.

As its popularity grew, workers contributed poems, ballads, essays and fiction – often using their characters to report on conditions and situations in their lives.Dublin, Thomas (1975). [http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/u2ei/u2materials/dublin.html "Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: 'The Oppressing Hand of Avarice Would Enslave Us'"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090227063040/http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/u2ei/u2materials/dublin.html |date=2009-02-27 }}, Labor History. Online at [http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/index.html Whole Cloth: Discovering Science and Technology through American History] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090305072635/http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/index.html |date=2009-03-05 }}. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved on 27 August 2007 The contents of the magazine alternated between serious and farcical. In the first issue, "A Letter about Old Maids" suggested that "sisters, spinsters, lay-nuns, &c" were an essential component of God's "wise design"."Betsy" (1840). "A Letter about Old Maids". Lowell Offering. Series 1, No. 1. Online at the [http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals/lo_40_10.pdf On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics]. Retrieved on 27 August 2007. Later issues – particularly in the wake of labor unrest in the factories – included an article about the value of organizing and an essay about suicide among the Lowell girls.Farley, Harriet (1844). [http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops/primarysources/lowell/docs/suicide.html "Editorial: Two Suicides"]. Lowell Offering. Series 4, No. 9. Online at Primary Sources: Workshops in American History. Retrieved on 27 August 2007. Among its contributors: Eliza G. Cate, Betsey Guppy Chamberlain, Abba Goddard, Lucy Larcom, Harriet Hanson Robinson,{{cite book

|last=Robinson|first=Harriet|title=Loom and Spindle |page=145

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2LMxButJV38C&pg=PA145|access-date=2012-07-05

|year=1898|publisher=Applewood Books|isbn=978-1-4290-4524-7}}{{citation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jWMWUCHJRKgC&pg=PA461 |title=Lowell Offering |author=Harriet H. Robinson |work= The New England Magazine |date=December 1889 }} and Augusta Harvey Worthen.{{cite book|last1=Willard|first1=Frances Elizabeth|last2=Livermore|first2=Mary Ashton Rice|title=A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_zXEEAAAAYAAJ|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_zXEEAAAAYAAJ/page/n807 803]|edition=Public domain|year=1893|publisher=Moulton}}

Many women who worked in the mills, such as Ellen Collins, were unhappy with the conditions and hours they were forced to work. They did not like the constant noise and bells that they heard during their shifts, and often had the desire to return to their homes to work on farms rather than in the factories. With them having the desire to go back home, many women also missed their families and wished to go back to them as well.{{Cite journal|last=Miller|first=Susan|date=1840|title=The Spirit of Discontent|journal=The Lowell Offering}}

However, the appeal of education and self-sufficiency drew many young women in, and they used the opportunities they received at the Lowell Mills to learn. They learned to read and write, as well as practicing music and foreign languages.{{Cite journal|last=Eisler|first=Benita|date=1977|title=Introduction|journal=The Lowell Offering|pages=29}}

Harriet Farley, against her family and friends wishes, left Atkinson, New Hampshire in 1838 to work in Lowell's textile mills. In Lowell, although working 11 to 13 hours a day, and living in a crowded company boardinghouse, she felt a sense of freedom to “read, think and write…without restraint.” She was soon contributing articles to the newly formed Lowell Offering, and in 1842 along with Harriot Curtis became its co-editor. The magazine was revived in 1848 as the New England Offering (1848–1850), publishing contributions from working women throughout New England.

• Betsey Guppy Chamberlain
• Harriet Farley
• Lucy Larcom
• Harriet Hanson Robinson
• Augusta Harvey Worthen
• Sarah Bagley
• Abba Goddard
• Eliza Jane Cate
• Harriot F. Curtis

The University of Massachusetts Lowell currently uses the title for its student literary magazine as an homage.

• Lowell system

{{reflist|30em}}

• [http://library.uml.edu/clh/Offering.htm Lowell Offering at the Center for Lowell History, UMass Lowell]

• [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044019620822?urlappend=%3Bseq=85 Editorial] about cover engraving, 1845
• {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bxBHAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA3|title=Early Factory Labor in New England |author=Harriet B. Robinson |year=1883}}
• {{cite book|author=Martha Louise Rayne|title=What can a woman do: or, her position in the business and literary world|year=1885|publisher=F.B. Dickerson |location=St. Louis, Mo. |chapter=Profession of Journalism |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MklKAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA50 }}
• [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044019620822?urlappend=%3Bseq=11 List of contributors] to Lowell Offering, compiled in 1902
• {{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GmAiAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA241 |chapter=Lowell Mill Girls Fifty Years Ago |title=Vassar Miscellany |year= 1909 }}

• Hathi Trust. [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011570066 Lowell Offering], fulltext
• [http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/Low-offr1.html "Tales of Factory Life"] as collected in the Lowell Offering, 1841.
• [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37471 Mind Amongst the Spindles] (Selections from the Lowell Offering)
• UMass Lowell. [https://libguides.uml.edu/c.php?g=492497&p=3373373 New England Offering Index] by Judith Ranta

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Category:Defunct literary magazines published in the United States

Category:History of women in Massachusetts

Category:Magazines established in 1840

Category:Magazines disestablished in 1845

Category:Defunct magazines published in Massachusetts

Category:Mass media in Lowell, Massachusetts

Category:Monthly magazines published in the United States

Category:Defunct poetry magazines published in the United States

Category:1840 establishments in Massachusetts

Category:1845 disestablishments in Massachusetts

Category:Defunct women's magazines published in the United States