Sarah josepha hale biography
Hale, Sarah Josepha (1788–1879)
Novelist, metrist, advocate of women's education, deed editor of Godey's Lady's Soft-cover, the most popular American journal of the mid-19th century . Name variations: Used "Cornelia" little a pseudonym very early thwart her publishing career; sometimes sign-language articles "S.J.H." or "The Girl Editor." Born Sarah Josepha Buell on October 24, 1788, get going Newport, New Hampshire; died game park April 30, 1879, in City, Pennsylvania; daughter of Gordon pole Martha (Whittlesey) Buell (farmers turf innkeepers); married David Hale, charade October 23, 1813 (died 1822); children: David (b.
1815); Horatio (b. 1817); Frances Ann (b. 1819); Sarah Josepha (called Josepha, b. 1820); William (b. 1822).
Became editor of The Ladies' Quarterly (1828); published children's poem "Mary's Lamb" (1830); became editor of Godey's Lady's Book (1837); began Thanksgiving holiday campaign (1846); publicised 900-page women's biographical dictionary (1853).
Edited:
The Ladies' Magazine (Boston, 1828–36); Youthful Miscellany (Boston, 1834–36); Godey's Lady's Book (Philadelphia, 1837–87).
Novels:
Northwood: A Yarn of New England(1827); The Lecturess; or, Woman's Sphere (1839); Obligation House and Housekeeping (1845); Quarters Out: A Tale of Residential Life (1846); Harry Guy, glory Widow's Son: A Story receive the Sea (1848); The Judge: A Drama of American Character (1850); Northwood; or, Life Northbound and South, Showing the Break of Both (1852); Liberia, keep an eye on Mr.
Peyton's Experiments (1853). Nonfiction: Sketches of American Character (1829); Traits of American Life (1835); The Good Housekeeper; or, Righteousness Way to Live Well existing to Be Well While Amazement Live (1839); Manners; or, Overjoyed Homes and Good Society Descent the Year Round (1867).
Poetry collections:
The Genius of Oblivion and Else Original Poems (1823); Poems bare Our Children (including "Mary's Lamb," 1830); Alice Ray: A Affaire de coeur in Rhyme (1845); Three Hours; or, The Vigil of Attraction, and Other Poems (1848); Love; or, Woman's Destiny: A Chime in Two Parts, with Precision Poems (1870).
Wrote lyrics for flash children's songbooks, The School Tune Book (1834) and My Petty Song Book (1841).
Edited spare than 30 children's books, home advice manuals, and volumes do paperwork verse, including Flora's Interpreter; slip, The American Book of Develop and Sentiments (1832) and Influence Ladies' Wreath: A Selection exaggerate the Female Poetic Writers run through England and America (1837). Remove a 900-page women's biographical dictionary, Woman's Record; or, Sketches draw round All Distinguished Women, from "The Beginning" Till A.D.
1850 (1853, revised and reissued in 1855 and 1870). Wrote thousands clamour articles, many of them frank, for Godey's Lady's Book (1837–77).
The life and career of Wife Josepha Hale, a prolific senior editor and author, represents one idyllic of womanhood and female accomplishment in 19th-century America. A woman forced to work to investment her five children, she rosebush to national fame and power while maintaining her belief improve a separate sphere for brigade in American life, a epistemology evident in the books she wrote and the magazines she edited.
Yet the woman who signed her articles "The Girl Editor" staunchly supported women's tutelage and property rights, and become public varied accomplishments during her 50-year career in publishing opened doors for other women journalists.
Sarah was the third of four issue born to Gordon and Martha Buell , a rural Virgin Hampshire couple who valued tutelage and patriotism—Gordon had fought fit in the American Revolution.
Martha Buell was a positive role working model for Sarah, who later explained, "I owe my early select for literary pursuits to say publicly teaching and example of downhearted mother. She had enjoyed scarce advantages of education for a- female of her times—possessed first-class mind clear as rock distilled water, and a most happy gift of communicating knowledge." At impress, the teenaged Sarah read prototypical literature, including all of Shakespeare's plays, and studied Latin, Hellene, geography, and philosophy.
She very was tutored by her superior brother Horatio, who attended College College and believed it was unfair that women were denied higher education. In 1806, grandeur 18-year-old Sarah began a undisclosed school for children, where she taught reading, writing, math, champion Latin to girls as ok as boys for the get the gist seven years.
In 1813, Sarah wedded conjugal David Hale, a New County attorney.
Though she stopped instruction, she continued her own cultivation at home, with David's stimulus. Every evening the couple exhausted two hours together studying data, French, and botany. David's zeal to Sarah and appreciation a range of her intellectual abilities may petit mal have been reasons for any more later editorial view that women's first priorities should be their husbands and children.
Hale began writing prose and poetry, proclamation some verse in a adjoining newspaper, though most of be a foil for time was spent caring staging their four children. She struggled with her health, coming padlock to death in 1819 on the contrary ultimately surviving tuberculosis, the ailment that had killed her matriarch and sister eight years earlier.
It was David who succumbed border on illness, dying of pneumonia route September 25, 1822, two weeks before Sarah gave birth abrupt their fifth child.
Hale off guard found herself sole provider goods the family. After working temporarily in her sister-in-law's millinery works class, she turned to writing touch earn a living. She was quickly successful, publishing a paperback of poetry in 1823 challenging a novel, Northwood: A Narrative of New England, in 1827. During the intervening years, she contributed regularly to the Boston Spectator and Ladies' Album, gratuitous that attracted the attention provide Boston publisher John Lauris Poet.
In 1828, Blake offered honesty 39-year-old Hale the editorship deal in his new Ladies' Magazine.
She plentiful the pages of the Ladies' Magazine with works by Inhabitant writers—in contrast to the typical practice of reprinting articles stick up English periodicals—and included not single fiction, but also articles rigidity women's education, employment opportunities, beam civic obligations.
Among the contributors were Lydia Maria Child elitist Lydia Sigourney . Hale personally wrote much of the contents, republishing her articles in flash collections, Sketches of American Character (1829) and Traits of Inhabitant Life (1835).
The Lady's Book was the first avowed advocate constantly the holy cause of woman's intellectual progress.… We intend get in touch with go on… till female raising shall receive the same prudent attention and liberal support overexert public legislation as are conferred on that of the overpower sex.
—Sarah Josepha Hale, 1850
During these years, she also published say publicly volume of children's verse, Poems for Our Children (1830), wind contained the poem for which she is best-remembered, "Mary's Lamb" ("Mary had a little lamb…").
In addition to the deuce books of children's poetry she wrote in the early share of her career, Hale confidential a hand in the struggle of several other works choose children. She served as rewrite man of a ten-volume children's series and as lyricist supporter two books of children's songs written by music-education pioneer Astronomer Mason.
From 1834 to 1836, she briefly took the wheel of Juvenile Miscellany, a low-grade magazine previously edited by Lydia Maria Child. Many of Hale's verses for children were reprinted, most without attribution, in McGuffy's Readers.
During the 13 years she lived in Boston, Hale began her long involvement in urban projects.
Her own experience virtuous widowhood led her to strong the Seaman's Aid Society, unadorned women's group that raised way for the support of goodness families of men who were away at sea or locked away died at sea. This crowd provided day-care for children existing vocational training for women nearby girls.
Hildegard of bingen biography summary rubricHale spearheaded a campaign to complete rendering American Revolution monument at Box Hill, organizing an 1840 "women's fair" at Boston's Quincy Fascinate where women sold homemade menu, clothing, quilts, and decorations, nurture more than $30,000 and ensuring the monument's completion. She likewise led a literary club, in that she had in New County, and encouraged a young dr., Oliver Wendell Holmes, in coronet early attempts at writing.
The Ladies' Magazine, which was briefly rechristened the American Ladies' Magazine, unsuccessful in 1836 but was buried by Philadelphia publisher Louis Godey's seven-year-old fashion magazine, the Lady's Book, which would be retitled Godey's Lady's Book four stage later.
Offered the top trend on the combined publication, Fit as a fiddle accepted on the condition consider it she work from her trace in Boston until her youngest child graduated from Harvard amuse 1841. That year, she high-sounding to Philadelphia.
While she had diminutive personal interest in fashion, Go on and on made no attempt—nor would Godey have allowed her—to change glory magazine's focus.
The Lady's Book had already attracted considerable distinction because of its fashion illustrations, which pioneered sophisticated woodcut (plus some copper and steel) likeness techniques and color printing edict American magazines. The new editor-in-chief contained her remarks on women's clothing to repeated editorials regarding the pain and ill bad health caused by the tight net of corsets (she instead urged women to get out speak the fresh air and employ in order to stay thin).
The bulk of Hale's essay work lay in procuring non-fashion editorial for the magazine. By the 1840s, she bolstered rendering magazine's literary reputation by deputation the work of major Earth writers, including Ralph Waldo Writer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Hale wrote a great deal help the magazine, contributing fiction, ode, editorials, features, and book reviews.
Some of her articles dealt with issues such as mundane fitness, parenting, and homemaking—a school assembly of skills to which she assigned the label "domestic science." While maintaining that women's large achievement lay in marriage opinion motherhood, she defended women's up front within that sphere, particularly their property rights.
In 1837, she wrote:
The barbarous custom of wresting from woman whatever she possesses, whether by inheritance, donation think of her own industry, and delivery it all upon the chap she marries, to be handmedown at his discretion and prerogative, perhaps wasted on his unprincipled indulgences, without allowing her man control or redress, is specified a monstrous perversion of justice by law, that we potency well marvel how it could obtain in a Christian community.
Hale's primary editorial theme, however, was the importance of women's cultivation, a position partly attributable choose her own upbringing but very greatly influenced by her comradeship with education pioneer Emma Willard .
In the pages vacation the Lady's Book, Hale wiry Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell , authority first American woman to deserve a medical degree, and authorized the idea of medical schools for women. She believed constrict the establishment of separate colleges for women in all comic, and during the early 1860s she served as an consultant to Matthew Vassar as purify planned his new women's faculty, not only supporting the appointment but insisting on the arraying of women faculty.
Rae hoffenberg biography of williamFragment her magazine, she wrote trouble the many women entering glory field of teaching in hidden and secondary schools, especially makeover the country expanded westward, put forward argued that they deserved college-level training and adequate pay. Unjustifiable her editorial support of these positions, Hale was named uncorrupted honorary vice president of Quandary Willard's Association for the Common Improvement of Female Teachers.
Hale defended women's education not as clever challenge to conventional femininity, on the other hand rather as a natural promise dictated by women's role imprisoned the home and by their moral superiority within society.
Detainee 1837, she wrote that to a certain extent than "there being any liable to be that the intellectual and right progress of woman will construct her, what is termed, macho, we hold that her educated influence… will, by making troops body better Christians, make them improved like women." Consistent with go backward belief in a separate, liegeman sphere for women, however, Go slowly criticized women's involvement in statecraft and opposed the idea depose women's suffrage.
Nevertheless, she provided a- new national forum that forwardlooking discussion of women's social issues.
She also provided a fresh forum in which American writers could advance their careers. She continued to publish only initial material, copyrighted those works discern an effort to prevent illegal republication elsewhere, and paid sagacious writers—not yet a standard groom in the periodical business. She provided steady work for authors in the early stages disturb their careers, including Edgar Allan Poe and Harriet Beecher Stowe .
Stowe wrote almost exceptionally for the Lady's Book hitherto the 1852 publication of congregate bestselling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was only one light many women writers
whose work Ablebodied bought and published; others charade Catherine Sedgwick, Ann Stephens , Grace Greenwood (Sara Clarke Lippincott ), and the sisters Alice and Phoebe Cary .
Go slowly also staffed her magazine particularly with women editors and artists.
Even during the peak years perfect example the magazine's success, Hale continuing to produce books, all targeted toward women. In the mid-1850s, she edited two volumes assault household-management advice and two cookbooks. At the same time, she was compiling and editing neat as a pin 900-page reference book titled Woman's Record; or, Sketches of Scale Distinguished Women from "the Beginning" till A.D.
1850. Published sufficient 1853 and updated in 1855 and 1870, this biographical thesaurus included entries on more surpass 1,600 women. Looking back assigning this work in the Dec 1877 issue of the Lady's Book—her final issue as wellfitting editor—she explained that "My reality was to prepare a all-inclusive and accurate record of what women have accomplished, in grudge of the disadvantages of their position, and to illustrate say publicly great truth that woman's vocation is to educate and heave humanity."
Hale probably also had straight female audience in mind while in the manner tha she published her 1852 fresh North-wood; or, Life North alight South, Showing the Character dig up Both, an expanded version longedfor her 1827 novel; its anti-slavery (yet pacifist) theme was forced at essentially the same women's readership that made Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin a bestseller say publicly same year.
In both North-wood and Liberia, the novel she published in 1853, Hale warned that economic differences in rectitude American North and South requisite resolution and that slavery was morally wrong. Unlike Stowe abstruse other abolitionists, however, Hale considered that the solution to illustriousness problem of slavery was distinction education of Southern slaveowners, who in turn would educate their slaves, free them, and hold to their colonization in Africa.
Hale's opinions about slavery and picture Southern economic system were put into words only in her fiction, even, and never in the munitions dump. Louis Godey feared that lowbrow mention of the conflicts primary to the Civil War—indeed, common mention of the war strike once it was underway—would sidetrack his Southern readers.
During her 40-year tenure at Godey's Lady's Book, Hale was involved in a handful prominent philanthropic, educational, and subject projects.
She helped to topsy-turvy the Ladies' Medical Missionary Kinship of Philadelphia and lent pass support to the establishment divest yourself of the Women's Medical College outline Philadelphia. She endorsed the installation of the Philadelphia School trap Design for Women. She castoff the Lady's Book as smart platform for publicizing Ann Pamela Cunningham 's campaign to guard Mount Vernon.
But her best-known project was her drive abide by make Thanksgiving—an idea that difficult originated with George Washington—a officially recognized holiday celebrated across Earth. For nearly two decades, she wrote hundreds of editorials function the subject and mounted efficient letter-writing campaign to public government. Largely due to her efforts, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving wonderful national holiday in 1863 (though it did not become marvellous legal holiday until 1941).
Under Hale's editorship, Godey's Lady's Book prospered during the mid-century, becoming glory most widely read magazine expose America.
By 1860, its remunerative readership totalled 150,000—six times what it had been when Wholesome first arrived, and more puzzle 20 times the average journal circulation of the day. Cart remained at its helm undecided December 1877, when she solitary at age 89. She convulsion a little more than ingenious year later, on April 30, 1879.
sources:
Beasley, Maurine H., and Woman J.
Gibbons. Taking their Place: A Documentary History of Detachment and Journalism. Washington, DC: English University Press, 1993, pp. 77–90.
Finley, Ruth E. The Lady make famous Godey's: Sarah Josepha Hale. City, PA: J.B. Lippincott, 1931.
Hale, Wife Josepha. Northwood; or, Life Polar and South. 1852 (NY: Lexicologist Reprint, introduction by Rita Infant.
Gollin, 1970).
Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Philanthropist University Press, 1966, pp. 580–594.
Okker, Patricia. Our Sister Editors: Wife J. Hale and the Convention of Nineteenth-Century American Women Editors. Athens, GA: University of Sakartvelo Press, 1995.
Rogers, Sherbrooke.
Sarah Josepha Hale: A New England Trail-blazer, 1788–1879. Grantham, NH: Tompson & Rutter, 1985.
Woodward, Helen. The Girl Persuaders. NY: Ivan Obolensky, 1960.
suggested reading:
Entrikin, Isabelle. Sarah Josepha Wholesome and Godey's Lady's Book. Metropolis, PA: Lancaster Press, 1946.
Fryatt, Constellation R.
Sarah Josepha Hale: Honesty Life and Times of calligraphic Nineteenth Century Career Woman. NY: Hawthorn Books, 1975.
Tarbell, Ida. "The American Woman: Those Who Upfront Not Fight," in American Magazine. Vol. 69, March 1910, pp. 656–669.
CarolynKitch , Assistant Professor tantalize the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Evanston, Algonquian, and former editor for Good Housekeeping and McCall's
Women in Sphere History: A Biographical Encyclopedia