author
Addie Chisholm
1844–1919
A Canadian temperance reformer as well as a writer, she is best known for a practical handbook that supported Women’s Christian Temperance Union work in Canada. Writing under the name Addie Chisholm, she combined activism with clear, organizational prose meant to help local reform efforts grow.
1 Audiobook
Why and How : a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada
by Addie Chisholm
About the author
Born Adeline Davis in Hamilton, Upper Canada, in 1844, she later became known as Addie Chisholm through her first marriage and was also known later in life as Lady Foster. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography identifies her as a temperance reformer and author, and Project Gutenberg lists Addie Chisholm as the author name for her surviving best-known book, Why and How: a Hand-Book for the Use of the W.C.T. Unions in Canada.
Her writing was closely tied to the work of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Canada. Rather than writing fiction or purely literary essays, she produced practical guidance aimed at organizing, persuading, and strengthening reform work, which gives her book a strong sense of purpose as well as historical interest.
Because reliable sources about her are limited, many biographical details are better documented under the names Adeline Davis, Adeline Chisholm, or Lady Foster than under Addie Chisholm alone. Still, the available record shows a writer whose authorship grew directly out of public reform work in late 19th-century Canada.