The Adams Family Correspondence, Mr. Butterfield writes, "is an unbroken record of the changing modes of domestic life, religious views and habits, travel, dress, servants, food, schooling, reading, health and medical care, diversions, and every other conceivable aspect of manners and taste among the members of a substantial New England family who lived on both sides of the Atlantic and wrote industriously to each other over a period of more than a century." These volumes are the first in the estimated twenty or more in Series 2 of The Adams Papers.

Including about six...

The letters in these volumes, written from both sides of the Atlantic, addressed by and to members of the Adams family, chronicle nearly five years of its history, They were years in which John Adams in successive missions to Europe, accompanied first by one son, then by two, initiated what would be a continuing role for Adamses in three generadons: representing their country and advancing its interests in the capitals of Europe.

John Adams, a troubled but stouthearted Yankee lawyer on the vast new scene of Europe, though always circumspect in familial correspondence in...

"I cannot O I cannot be reconciled to living as I have done for 3 years past... Will you let me try to soften, if I cannot wholy) releave you, from your Burden of Cares and perplexities?'' So begins Abigail Adams' correspondence to herhusband in these volumes: a plea to end their long separation, as John Adams represented the United States in Europe while Abigail tended to family and farm in Massachusetts, and passed on to John Crucial political information from Congress.

In October 1782, the Adams family was as widely scattered as it would ever be, with young John Quincy Adams in...