Category: Biographies
During the first half of the nineteenth century, Miss Sedgwick would doubtless have been considered the queen of American letters, but, in the opinion of her friends, the beauty of her character surpassed the merit of her books. In 1871, Miss Mary E. Dewey, her life-long neigh...
Her mother's name was Lovell,--Mary Lovell,--granddaughter of "Master Lovell," long known as a classical teacher in colonial Boston, and daughter of James Lovell, an active Revo...
4. Chapter 4After Dr. Channing, Henry Ware was perhaps the most popular preacher in any Boston pulpit. One sermon preached by him on a New Year's eve, upon the Duty of Improvement, became m...
5. Chapter 5This literary success was achieved at the age of twenty-three, and the same year Miss Francis opened a private school in Watertown, which she continued three years, until her ma...
2. Chapter 2There was something in the relations of this Sedgwick family, not perhaps without parallel, but very beautiful. These brothers and sisters write to each other like lovers. To he...
7. Chapter 7The minister with saint-like eloquence was Dr. Channing. The letter is valuable as showing the source of the flame that had fired her philanthropic soul. For the finer culture o...
12. Chapter 12These literary efforts, produced under difficulties, inspired Prof. Stowe with great confidence in her genius. He wrote her in 1842, "My dear, you must be a literary woman. It i...
6. Chapter 6Mr. and Mrs. Child retired from the _Standard_ in 1849. Her next letters are dated from Newton, Mass. Her father was living upon a small place--a house and garden--in the neighb...
13. Chapter 13Life may have been harder for Mrs. Alcott than she anticipated, but she knew very well that she was abjuring riches. Two years before her marriage, her brother had written her:...
10. Chapter 10It appears from his account that Mr. Emerson saw much of Margaret during these years and that she was frequently his guest. "The day," he says, "was never long enough to exhaust...
9. Chapter 9The effects of her training upon her health, Margaret appears to have exaggerated. She thought it had "checked her growth, wasted her constitution," and would bring her to a "pr...
1. Chapter 1During the first half of the nineteenth century, Miss Sedgwick would doubtless have been considered the queen of American letters, but, in the opinion of her friends, the beauty...
8. Chapter 8Having reported her discoveries to the men of science, she next appealed to the men of wealth. Providence had at that date a multi-millionaire, by the name of Butler; he left fo...
11. Chapter 11"In her religion," says Mrs. Stowe, "she was distinguished by a most unfaltering Christ-worship.... Had it not been that Dr. Payson had set up and kept before her a tender, huma...
14. Chapter 14The breaking out of the Civil War stirred Miss Alcott's soul to its depths, and we have numerous references to its progress in her journal. "I like the stir in the air," she wri...