Esther Forbes was
born on June 28, 1891, in rural Massachusetts
to a family steeped in American history. Her mother, Harriet Forbes,
was an antiquarian specializing in the New England area, and the
Forbes home was filled with relics of the region’s past. The Forbes
family also eagerly traded folklore, particularly a story about
an ancestor who was accused of witchcraft. From a very young age,
Forbes began to read widely, paying particular attention to books
on history and stories set within a historical context.
After graduating from high school at the Bradford
Academy, Forbes spent two years studying history at the University
of Wisconsin. When the United States entered World War I, she left
college to join the war effort. Just like Johnny Tremain, war transformed
her life and her ambitions. Forbes spent several years working on
a Virginia farm to produce food for the embattled nation, which
she calls the proudest years of her life. After the war ended, she
moved back to Massachusetts and worked as an editor at the Boston-based
publishing company Houghton Mifflin. During this period she also
devoted a lot of time to her own writing. She published her first
novel, O Genteel Lady!, in 1926,
and published four more historical novels over the course of the
next decade. In 1942 she published her first
nonfiction work, a biography of Paul Revere entitled Paul
Revere and the World He Lived In, for which she won the
Pulitzer Prize.
While researching Paul Revere’s life, Forbes became increasingly interested
in the colonial period, particularly in the Bostonians of the Revolutionary
era. She decided to write a children’s book telling the story of
a young Boston apprentice who witnesses America’s birth firsthand.
Forbes began writing Johnny Tremain on December 8, 1941, the
day after Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States entered
World War II. As the war waged on, Forbes was impressed with the
way that young men and women were suddenly forced to become adults
and take on weighty responsibilities. She admired their sense of self-sacrifice
and their commitment to the cause of patriotism. Her observations
of American youth during World War II helped her to understand the
youth of the Revolutionary era and the ways in which they, too,
were forced to grow up rapidly. These observations helped Forbes
to develop the characters of Johnny and Rab. Johnny
Tremain was published to widespread acclaim in 1943,
during the height of American engagement in World War II. In 1944 Johnny
Tremain received the Newbery Medal, awarded annually to
the best book of children’s literature. After Johnny Tremain, Forbes
returned to publishing novels for adults. Forbes’s best-selling
book The Running of the Tide won the MGM novel
award and inspired a motion picture. Her last work, Rainbow
on the Road, spawned the 1969 musical Come
Summer. Forbes died on August 12, 1967,
after a long and fruitful career as a novelist, historian, and biographer.
Though Johnny Tremain is one
of only two books Forbes wrote for children, it is the work for
which she is best known today. The novel has become standard reading
for students because of its insightful and vivid portrayal of the
events leading up to the Revolutionary War. During
the time period that the book covers, colonial frustrations are
reaching a fever pitch and threatening to erupt into war. In the
wake of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years
War, England found itself heavily in debt and looked to the colonists
to alleviate some of the financial pressure. Between 1764 and 1767, the
British government enacted a series of new taxes targetting to the
colonies, such as the Sugar Tax, the Townshend Acts, and the notorious
Stamp Tax. Given that the war had been fought partly to protect
the American colonists, the decision to raise revenue from within
the colonies made some sense, but it outraged many Americans, who
felt that they were being governed unfairly. Since Americans had
no representative in Parliament, they argued that they had no say
in how they were taxed or how their tax money was spent. The Americans
called England’s unfair financial practice “taxation without representation.”
The Americans responded to England’s actions by ignoring
the laws, formally protesting the British violation of American
rights, and finally by resorting to boycotts and outright violence.
England repealed many of the taxes in response to American protest,
and the years 1770 to 1773 saw
a lull in the difficulties between the mother country and her colonies,
although the rebel leaders continued to criticize England. In 1773,
the year in which Johnny Tremain begins, this lull
in civil unrest was broken. The disruptive incident was the infamous
Boston Tea Party, during which young patriots, dressed as Native
Americans, stormed a British ship and tossed its cargo of tea into
Boston Harbor. This act of disobedience, and the British response,
set off a series of events that led to the Revolutionary War. Johnny
Tremain brings to life this series of events, and the lives
of the men and women involved in them.
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