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Title: Dolley Madison: Her Life, Letters, and Legacy by Holly Shulman, David Mattern ISBN: 0-8239-5749-7 Publisher: Powerkids Pr Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Library Binding Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $31.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Dolley Madison creates the model for the First Lady
Comment: Perhaps one of the most telling details of this juvenile biography of Dolley Madison is how much time authors Holly C. Shulman and David B. Mattern spend filling in the historical gaps. This should not really be surprising since historical records from the 18th-century would be relatively sparse, especially with regards to a young girl born in North Carolina and raised in Virginia by obscure parents. The early chapters of this book do their best to fashion a reasonable narrative out of these limited details, but I would not be surprised if young readers picked up on how this biography is quite different from those they would read about more contemporary figures, First Ladies or otherwise. If they do not learn a lot about Dolley Madison from this book, then the reason may well be that there is decidedly less primary historical material about her to use as the basis for a book.

This book begins by noting that Dolley Madison, whose first name is often misspelled, is remembered for saving Gilbert Stuart's painting of George Washington when the British burned the Executive Mansion in the War of 1812 (the building was not known as the White House until after it was repaired and repainted), and is most recognizable as being the name under which cakes have been sold. However, Shulman and Mattern ultimately consider Madison important because she created the model for every First Lady who came after her. Unfortunately, the examples of Dolley Madison as the exemplary Washington hostess is based on very few specific, historical examples. The glowing terms in which she was honored in obituaries after her death speak more to the point than any story told in the biography, especially when the most memorable example of a Washington social party would be the "Merry Affair" during Jefferson's Administration, in which Dolley Madison was but a bystander. Still, even with this limited array of anecdotes, the authors do convey a sense for how what Dolley Madison did was both different and of some importance when compared to what had come before in terms of setting a tone for how things were done in the capital of a still rather new nation.

In many ways the illustrations and letters accompanying the text are the most interesting part of the this book, especially since Dolley Madison lived long enough to have a photograph taken by Matthew Brady, which preserved for posterity her natural smile and the twinkle in her eyes (both are omnipresent in all of her portraits as well, but there is just something about seeing an actual photograph). There are reproductions of letters written by both Dolley and her husband James "the great little Madison" along with historic paintings of the various figures encountered in the biography as well as contemporary photographs of some of the places the Madisons lived. One of the letters shown is from James Madison to Thomas Jefferson and is written partially in code (oh, those wacky Founding Fathers) and expressive concerns about the new Senate taking on too aristocratic a tone in its proceedings. The production values on this volume, which is part of The Library of American Lives and Times, are quite impressive. Other titles in this series look at Davy Crockett, Alexander Hamilton and Phillis Wheatley, and all feature the distinctive cover design of a historic portrait of their subject layered over a historic scene from their life (in Dolley Madison's case, the British troops torching the Executive Mansion).