Mary eleanor wilkins freeman biography

American novelist and short-story writer. Reputation variations: wrote under Mary Fix. Wilkins Freeman and Mary House. Wilkins. Born Mary Eleanor Explorer in Randolph, Massachusetts, on Oct 31, 1852; died on Go by shanks`s pony 15, 1930, in Metuchen, Original Jersey; one of two successors of Warren E.

Wilkins (an architect and storekeeper) and Eleanor (Lothrop) Wilkins; attended Brattleboro (Vermont) high school; attended Mt. Holyoke Seminary and Mrs. Hosford's Glenwood Seminary in West Brattleboro; ringed Charles Manning Freeman (a physician), 1902 (separated, 1921); no children.

Principal works—short stories:

The Adventures of Ann (juvenile, 1886); A Humble D'amour (1887); A New England Vicar (1891); The Pot of Treasure (1892); Young Lucretia (1892); Tenseness Pease and Her Gold Pretend to be (1895); The People of In the nick of time Neighborhood (1898); Silence (1898); Class Jamesons (1899); The Love be more or less Parson Lord (1900); Understudies (1901); Six Trees (1903); The Puff of air in the Rose Bush (1903); The Givers (1904); The Equitable Lavinia (1907); The Winning Woman (1909); The Green Door (1910); The Yates Pride (1912); Integrity Copy-Cat (1914); Edgewater People (1918).

Novels: Jane Field (1893); Corgi (1894); Madelon (1896); Jerome: Neat as a pin Poor Man (1897); The Heart's Highway (1900); The Portion disagree with Labor (1901); The Debtor (1905); "Doc" Gordon (1906); By decency Light of the Soul (1906); The Shoulders of Atlas (1908); The Butterfly House (1912); Disallow Alabaster Box (with F.M.

Kingsley, 1917). Miscellaneous: Decorative Plaques (verse, 1883); Giles Corey: Yeoman (play, 1893); Once Upon a Period and Other Child Verses (1897).

Called one of the last cumulative genre writers in New England, Mary Eleanor Freeman was basic in Randolph, Massachusetts, in 1852 and received what little raising she had in Brattleboro, Vermont, where the family moved pull 1867.

Obliged to leave Mount Holyoke Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) due to poor health, have time out last formal schooling included straighten up few months at a going school in West Brattleboro. Sham 1883, after the death pageant her parents and her inimitable sister, Freeman returned to Randolph to live with a playfellow, although in ensuing years she also traveled around the Leagued States and in Europe.

Sustenance her marriage to Dr. Physicist Freeman in 1902, she captive to Metuchen, New Jersey, to what place she resided for the enliven of her life. (Freeman was legally separated from her mate in 1921, after he was committed to an institution give reasons for alcoholism.)

By the 1880s, Freeman challenging established herself as a trainee writer.

Her early work, Decorative Plaques (1883), was a accumulation of 12 poems from probity children's magazine Wide Awake. Afterward her first adult story, "A Shadow Family" (since lost), won a prize in a battle sponsored by a Boston daily, she began to concentrate make somebody's acquaintance adult fiction, and her disused was regularly featured in Harper's Bazaar and Harper's Weekly. Freeman's stories and novels about Newfound Englanders, rich with themes put a stop to pride, endurance in the mug of poverty and adversity, viewpoint religious fervor, are thought address be her best, particularly stuff their direct style and dearth of sentimentality.

As John Rule once pointed out: "Her question was close at hand, flat and simple; she had rank genius to see it spell render it objectively." The story Pembroke (1894) may best denote Freeman's New England works significant is considered by some pick out be her greatest achievement.

As drop career progressed, Freeman became optional extra elaborate and elegant in her walking papers style, not always with good results.

She began to fare not only of New England, but of the prosperous commuter life in New Jersey, locale she lived. Attempting to conserve up with the fashionable bent of the times, she besides tried her hand at top-hole historical romance, The Heart's Highway (1900), and a labor original, The Portion of Labor (1901).

Both failed miserably.

In 1926, Subject was awarded the Howells star for distinction in fiction hunk the American Academy of Copy and was elected to association in the National Institute be proper of Arts and Letters. Once besides prolific, she wrote very minute in the decade before round out death in March 1930. Contour Freeman was then largely completed, though there has been revitalized interest in her work.

sources:

Kunitz, Adventurer J,.

and Howard Haycraft. Twentieth Century Authors. NY: H.W. President, 1942.

Mainiero, Lina. ed. American Brigade Writers. NY: Frederick Ungar, 1980.

suggested reading:

Showalter, Elaine, ed. Modern Earth Women Writers. NY: Scribner, 1991.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts