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Amanda Berry Smith: From Washerwoman to Evangelist. By Adrienne M. Israel. Studies in Evangelicalism 16. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1998. xvi + 192 pp. n.p.
Adrienne Israel's Amanda Berry Smith: From Washerwoman to Evangelist is welcome as the first full-length critical biography of a woman who, "[w]ithout official church sanction or financial support, . . . emerged from obscurity and near destitution to become one of the nineteenth century's most important Christian evangelists" (1). While Smith is not as well known as perhaps she should be, neither has she been completely neglected in recent years, which have seen two republications of her 1893 autobiography-most recently in 1988 as a volume in the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers-and several short but valuable biographical sketches. Nevertheless, Israel's work offers an important complement to these sources.
On one level, Amanda Berry Smith's life and Israel's biography deserve attention for sheer human drama. Born as a slave in 1837, Amanda experienced a childhood as a free black during the years of growing abolitionist activity but also two unhappy marriages, which forced her to support herself and her child by exhausting and poorly paid domestic service. But like Jarena Lee before her, the death of her husband freed Amanda to follow her call from God with stunning success...