Civil War Women Blog

Ann Stephens

2012-05-31T10:07:00.000-04:00

Writer and Magazine Editor in the Civil War Era

During the mid-nineteenth century, Ann Stephens (1810-1886) enjoyed a long, lucrative career as one of America's best known and most respected women writers. In addition to serving as either editor for six popular magazines for more than twenty-six years, she wrote some forty-five works of fiction and manuals on the domestic arts. Stephens was one of the first generation of women to assert themselves as professional writers, entering the literary field for the sake of earning a living.

Childhood and Early Years
Ann Sophia Winterbotham was born on March 30, 1810 in Humphreysville, Connecticut, the daughter of Ann and John Winterbotham, manager of a woolen mill. Ann's mother died when Ann was very young and Ann was raised by her mother's sister, whom her father later married. The Winterbothams had a large family, as was the custom in those days.

Ann Winterbotham knew from childhood that she wanted to be a writer. She was educated at a dame school in South Britain, Connecticut and began writing at an early age. Around 1830, John Winterbotham lost his fortune in the business declines that resulted in his financial ruin, and he decided to move his family to Ohio.

Instead of going west with her family, Ann married Edward Stephens, a printer from Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1831 and they relocated to Portland, Maine. They had two children: a daughter Ann (1841) and a son Edward (1845).

Editorial and Literary Careers
In 1834, Edward and Ann Stephens founded the Portland Magazine, a monthly literary periodical where some of her early work first appeared. Ann served as editor and frequent contributor poems, sketches and historical tales for the magazine. Edward was the publisher. Ann published her first book, The Portland Sketch Book (1836), a collection of the work of local writers.

Soon thereafter Ann experienced a stillbirth and decided to visit her father's farm in Ohio to recuperate. Ann not only recovered her health but stored away enough knowledge of the West to provide writing material for years to come, including some knowledge of Indian languages.

In 1837 the Stephens family moved to New York City where Ann began her long career as a magazine writer and editor. Ann took the job of editor of the Ladies' Companion, a position she held for four years. Her husband meanwhile had obtained work in the Custom House.

Stephens left the Ladies' Companion for Graham's Magazine because they offered more money for less work. She became Associate Editor (1841-1842) of Graham's, where her fellow contributors were William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Graham's had another associate editor by the name of Edgar Allan Poe, who later mentioned Stephens and her work in The Literati of New York City, a series published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846.

Over the next few years she wrote over twenty-five serial novels plus short stories and poems for several well known periodicals, including Godey's Lady's Book and Graham's. Under the pseudonym 'Jonathan Slick' she wrote a series of sketches about an imaginary Yankee's experience in New York City. Edward Stephens published them as High Life in New York, By Jonathan Slick, Esq. of Weathersfield, Connecticut, A Series of Letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the Church over to Weathersfield, in the State of Connecticut (1843).

In 1844 Stephens became Associate Editor of Peterson's Ladies' National Magazine. A prolific writer, during the remainder of her life she contributed to it at least one serial novel a year - commencing in January and ending in December - and many poems and short stories. Her principal short stories were "Mary Derwent," for which she obtained a prize of $400, "Malvia Gray," "The Patchwork Quilt" and "A Story of Western Life."

From 1850 to 1852 Stephens traveled in Europe and the East, where she had the opportunity to meet with writers such as Charles Dickens and other notables such as the Pope and members of the Russian Imperial family.

On her return to the United States Stephens published her first long novel, Fashion and Famine (1854), which is the best known of her works. In France three different translations of it were published. Although she belonged to the intense school of novelists, her attention to minute details and her clearness of vision enabled her to be very realistic in the description of natural scenes, and she never hesitated to visit hospitals, public institutions and resorts, in search of striking characters.

Stephens always resided in New York City, but spent many winters in Washington DC, where it is said that she was well connected with all of the presidents and other major political figures of the time.

Some say that the most famous of her writings is her novel The Old Homestead, published in New York in 1855. It was reprinted in numerous editions, but is most widely known from its dramatization by George L. Aiken (another dime novelist) in 1856, and especially from its stage revival during the 1880s and 1890s by Denman Thompson.

Ann Stephens started her own magazine in 1856, Mrs. Stephens' Illustrated New Monthly (July 1856 to June 1858), which was published by her husband. Two years later it merged with Peterson's Magazine. Stephens wrote mostly historical and romantic melodramas that first appeared in serial form in these magazines and other popular women's publications. Many were later published in book form that Stephens' numerous avid readers quickly purchased.

Ann Stephens was the author of the first dime novel Beadle & Adams Company published Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860). The term dime novel originated with this book, which was a reprint of her serial that appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March and April 1839. It was the first book in the Beadle Dime Novel series, and for the privilege of reprinting it Beadle paid Stephens $250. It is reported to have sold over 300,000 copies.

Stephens, like Elizabeth Oakes Smith, became one of the publisher's stable of writers, and gained an even wider readership. The Grolier Club later listed Maleaska as the most influential book of 1860.

Some of her other works include Alice Copley: A Tale of Queen Mary's Time (1844), The Diamond Necklace and Other Tales (1846), The Rejected Wife (1863) and the Pictorial History of the War for the Union in two volumes in 1865. A uniform edition of her works in fourteen volumes appeared from the press of T. B. Peterson and Brother in Philadelphia in 1869, and a new edition in twenty-three volumes was published in 1886.

Among Stephens' later novels are Wives and Widows (1869); Married in Haste (1870); A Noble Woman (1871); The Reigning Belle (1872); Bellehood and Bondage (1873); Lord Hope's Choice and its sequel The Old Countess (1873); and Phemie Frost's Experiences (1874). In addition to her novels and short stories, Stephens also wrote verse and literary reviews.

Ann Stephens died on August 20, 1886 at age 76 at the home of her publisher Charles J. Peterson in Newport, Rhode Island, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. She was survived by her son and daughter; her husband died in 1862.

SOURCES
Ann S. Stephens
Wikipedia: Ann S. Stephens
University of New England: Ann Stephens Collection

Alice Cary

2012-05-22T21:03:00.000-04:00

Poet and Novelist in the Civil War Era

Alice Cary (1820-1871) was a poet and author, and the sister of poet Phoebe Cary (1824–1871), who would become Alice's lifelong companion. Alice Cary's strong desire to be independent and to forge her own literary career prompted her to move alone to New York City at age 30. Cary was a most unusual 19th century woman who earned her own money, owned her own home and ran her own life - a true pioneer on many levels. A prolific writer, she ruined her health by the constant need to express herself.

Childhood and Early Years
Alice Cary was born on April 26, 1820 on a farm in Hamilton County, Ohio, eight miles north of Cincinnati. This was then considered the western frontier of the United States. After returning home from the War of 1812, Robert Cary had purchased from his uncle 27 acres of land, which he called Clovernook Farm. In 1814 he built a three-room frame house for his family, which was the birthplace of Alice and Phoebe Cary.

The Cary family earned their living through farming. Robert and Elizabeth Cary were converts to Universalism. Pious and Bible-oriented, they were theologically liberal and passed to their children a strong sense of equality and social justice. From their shy, tender father who often recited poetry, hymns and scriptural passages while doing farm work.

According to Alice, Elizabeth Cary was "a woman of superior intellect and of a good, well-ordered life. In my memory she stands apart from all others, wiser and purer, doing more and loving better than any other woman." Though burdened with household duties, Elizabeth found time to pursue interests in history, biography and politics. From her Alice inherited a common sense attitude, and she encouraged Alice to practice her writing.

The nearest village was called Mount Healthy and its surrounding farms and houses became the Clovernook memorialized in Alice Cary's short fiction. The farm was a good distance from any school, and the father could not afford to give his large family of nine children a good education. In a letter Alice described her formal education as "limited to the meagre and infrequent advantages of an obscure district school." But Alice and her sister Phoebe were fond of reading and studied constantly.

The two-story white brick house now known as Cary Cottage was built in 1832. Late in life, Alice Cary told a friend: "In the autumn of 1832, by persevering industry and frugal living, the farm was at last paid for, and a new and more commodius dwelling erected for the reception of the family. This new dwelling, which is still standing, is no more than the plainest of farm-houses, yet it represents a degree of comfort only attained after a long struggle."

While she was growing up, Alice Cary idolized her older sister Rhoda, according to Alice, the most gifted member of the family. On the way to and from school Rhoda would tell stories, and "when we saw the house in sight, we would often sit down under a tree, that she might have more time to finish the story." Alice never fully recovered from the death in 1833 of this sister who not only taught her the art and fascination of storytelling but also encouraged her first attempts at poetry.

As Universalists, the Carys subscribed to the The Trumpet and Universalist Magazine, a Boston periodical whose Poet's Corner, according to sister Phoebe, served as Alice's major model and source of inspiration. Their parents encouraged the sisters' writing talents.

Two years after their mother died in 1835, Robert Cary married a harsh, childless widow who thought writing was a sinful waste of time. While the sisters willingly helped with household work, they were determined to study and write after the day's work was done. Sometimes the girls were refused the use of candles, and resorted to a saucer of lard with a bit of rag for a wick as their only light after the rest of the family had retired, and wrote secretly into the night.

Literary Career
Evidently, Alice Cary began writing verse at an early age. In 1838, when Alice was 18, Cincinnati's Universalist paper, The Sentinel, printed her first major poem "The Child of Sorrow." The poem was praised by influential critics including Edgar Allan Poe and Horace Greeley.

Alice Cary was the more prolific, writing diligently, compulsively, every day. For ten years she published poems and short stories without pay, wherever she could, mostly in Universalist and Cincinnati publications. In 1847 she received her first payment of $10 from the Cincinnati Sentinel. The Sentinel accepted her work for many years afterwards.

In 1847, however, Cary began to write fiction for the National Era in Washington, DC. The Era was an abolitionist paper best known for serializing Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Its editor, Gamaliel Bailey, had recently moved from Cincinnati to DC. The Era brought Cary a national audience; it also brought her the attention of John Greenleaf Whittier, notable for his support of 19th century American women writers.

In 1848, Rufus Griswold, editor of two anthologies of American poetry and prose, wrote to Alice and Phoebe Cary requesting material for inclusion in his latest project, The Female Poets of America. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a review of this anthology for the Southern Literary Messenger (February 1849) and singled out Alice Cary's "Pictures of Memory" to be "decidedly the noblest poem in the collection."

Through Rufus Griswold's recommendation, a Philadelphia publisher accepted a collection of the sisters' poetry, which was issued as Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary (1850). Some two-thirds of the poetry was written by Alice. By the spring of 1850, Alice and Griswold were corresponding through letters which were often flirtatious, but it ended by the summer of that year.

Poems made the Cary sisters well-known, and earned them $100. In 1850 they took a three-month trip to the East - mainly New York City and Boston - and met some of the people who had given them praise and encouragement. Alice Cary in particular was well on her way to becoming a writer with a national reputation.

In November 1850 Alice Cary moved to New York City, determined to make a living as a writer - a daring step for a shy, gentle woman. Phoebe soon joined her there. Poetry by itself has never been a lucrative way to make a living for most writers. Nevertheless the Cary sisters persisted, earning whatever they could and living frugally within their meager income.

Alice's poems appeared regularly in leading magazines such as Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, New York Ledger, New York Weekly, and Packard's Monthly, while Phoebe had success in Scribner's Monthly, Galaxy, and Putnam's Monthly. Together they developed a circle of admiring, supportive friends.

In 1852 Alice Cary published Clovernook: or, Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West. These fictional sketches lovingly portrayed the country life of her childhood, but also dealt realistically with the hardship, economic deprivation and death so common to that experience. She followed this success with more Clovernook sketches the next year, Clovernook Children (1854) and Pictures of Country Life (1859). The books sold well in England as well as America.

Modern day critic Judith Fetterley characterizes Alice, as a writer of fiction, as "a master of the uncanny, of the dream sequence, of narrative generated by the logic of deeply interior and nonrational psychic life," in the tradition of Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

In 1855 Alice Cary bought a modest house on 20th Street which became a popular salon for actors, writers, clergy, feminists, social reformers and philanthropists; in short, all the noted contemporary names. For over 15 years the Cary sisters hosted tea and conversation at their Sunday evening receptions.

Among the more distinguished of the frequenters of the Cary home were New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, poet Bayard Taylor, poets Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard, poet John Greenleaf Whittier, Hans Brinker author Mary Mapes Dodge, Anna Dickinson, early journalist Jane Cunningham Croly, social reformer George Ripley, Harper's Bazaar editor Mary Booth, socialite Madame Le Vert and feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

The Carys had a passion for justice and hated oppression of any kind, especially the wrongs done to women in their day. Although Alice was in sympathy with the goals of the suffrage movement, she never actively joined, preferring to do her part through writing. Her novels and stories sometimes depicted the plight of poor, single, pregnant, abandoned women. Others portrayed self-confident, happily married women who remained true to themselves instead of conforming to societal expectations.

At the urging of editor and feminist Jane Croly, Alice reluctantly agreed to become the first president of the New York Woman's Club, later named Sorosis, which was created to help women think for themselves, gain new means of employment and overcome barriers that denied them opportunities. Phoebe served as an assistant editor for Susan B. Anthony's newspaper The Revolution.

Alice Cary wrote for the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Putnam's Magazine, the New York Ledger, the Independent and other literary periodicals. Her articles, whether prose or poetry, were also gathered into volumes which were received well in the United States and abroad. Cary also wrote novels and poems which did not make their first appearance in periodicals.

The constant need to publish in order to support herself took its toll on Cary's literary reputation. Though loved by the public, her poems and stories appeared too often for critics to take them as seriously as they might have otherwise. But writing daily was a psychological as well as financial need for Cary. Her work was the center of her existence and her means of expressing who she was and what she believed.

Cary was an indefatigable worker, and her short story collection Clovernook, or Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West (1852) was tremendously popular. Her other published fiction includes Clovernook Papers (1851); Hagar, a Story of To-day (1852); Married, Not Mated (1856); The Bishop's Son (1867); The Lover's Diary (1867); and Snow Berries, a Book for Young Folks (1869). Alice's poetry appeared as Lyra and Other Poems (1853), Maiden of Tlascala (1855) and Ballads, Lyrics and Hymns (1866).

Late Years
It is obvious that Cary's literary output slowed considerably during the late 1850s and early 1860s. Though the events of her life tell a story of achievement against the odds of being poor, female, uneducated and unsupported, Cary evidently paid a high price for her success. Her biographer presents her as working to live and living to work, finding pleasure only in labor and permanently destroying her health by refusing to rest.

Later in life, Cary became increasingly crippled. During her last two years she was finally bedridden and lived in great pain. She continued to write when her health permitted and was cared for faithfully and lovingly by her stronger sister Phoebe.

Alice Cary died of tuberculosis on February 12, 1871 at her home in New York at age 50. She was buried two days later in Brooklyn's Greenwood cemetery. The pallbearers at her funeral included P. T. Barnum and Horace Greeley. Cary left an unfinished novel, The Born Thrall, and enough uncollected poems to fill two more volumes.

Almost every newspaper across the United States carried an obituary that praised Alice Cary's contributions to literature. Those who regularly read her poetry felt they had lost a personal friend. Phoebe Cary wrote a beautiful and touching tribute to her sister's memory, which was published in the Ladies' Repository.

Phoebe Cary health had begun to deteriorate during Alice's last year. Battling fatigue and fever, probably caused by malaria, she attended to her sister's needs and ignored her own. When Alice died, the light went out of Phoebe's life. Exhausted, grieving and in poor health, she became severely depressed. She sat in a darkened room unable to eat or work, rejecting all visitors.

Concerned friends arranged for Phoebe to visit Newport, Rhode Island, in hopes that a different environment would revive her spirits. The result was contrary to expectations. She soon was bedridden with fever and chills. Phoebe Cary died on July 31, 1871, only six months after Alice's death. She was laid to rest next to her beloved sister.

SOURCES
The Cary Sisters
Wikipedia: Alice Cary
Heath Anthology of American Literature: Alice Cary

Louisa Lane

2012-05-15T17:34:00.000-04:00

Stage Actress and Theater Manager in the Civil War Era

Louisa Lane (1820-1897) was an actress and theater manager of British birth, who commanded great respect as the first female manager of a major American theater. Known for her skill as a character actor and comedian, Louisa Lane was a stage star who ultimately became the matriarch of one of the greatest acting families of all time: the Barrymores. Her legacy lives on in her descendants, including her great-great-granddaughter Drew Barrymore.

Louisa Lane was born January 10, 1820 in London, England, the daughter of actress and singer Eliza Trenter and actor and stage manager Thomas Frederick Lane. Her father died during her infancy, and Louisa's first experience on the stage occurred when she was only nine months old: her mother carried Louisa onto the stage in a play called Giovanni in London.

Theatrical Career
On June 7, 1827 seven-year-old Louisa landed in New York City with her widowed mother. In September she made her stage debut as Margaretta in No Song, No Supper, at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia. In September she appeared as the young Duke of York in Shakespeare's Richard III, with Junius Booth.

Like many children of her era, she had little formal education. Instead, Louisa grew up in the world of theater, traveling throughout the United States with her mother. In March 1828 Lane made her New York debut as "Little Pickle" in The Spoiled Child at the Bowery Theater.

Young Louisa was a very talented mimic and quick to memorize lines, which made her ideally suited for comedy and able to play many roles. She was soon recognized as a prodigy and became well known in the theater world. On January 5, 1829 the following was published in a Philadelphia newspaper:

This astonishing little creature appeared at the Chestnut Street Theatre last evening. She is not more than ten years of age, and evinces a talent for and a knowledge of the stage beyond what we find in many experienced performers of merit."

In 1833, at age 13, she toured the United States with the Bowery Theater Stock Company. Louisa often acted in male roles such as Romeo, Mark Antony and other Shakespearean roles. In 1836, at age 16, she married Henry B. Hunt, an Irish actor who was 40 years old.

Shortly after this marriage, Lane became a leading lady, starring in plays with Edwin Forrest, a well-known American actor. In 1838 she was employed as an actress by the Walnut Street Theater, a position she held until 1850. She later divorced Hunt, and in 1848, married George Mossop, an Irish singer and comedian who died the following year.

Lane's fame increased during the pre-Civil War era, when she gave magnificent performances as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal and Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals, both written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Malapropos became part of the language, meaning a pretentious and humorous misuse of words.

In 1850, Lane married John Drew, another Irishman. Lane had no children from her first two marriages. Although she was 30 when they wed, Lane gave birth to three children in five years: Louisa Drew, John Drew Jr. and Georgiana (Georgie) Drew (later Barrymore).

A continually working mother, she also began to choose more comedic roles, for which critics considered her best suited, and which helped her husband become America's leading Irish comedic actor. For years Lane and Drew toured together and separately.

In 1853 John Drew was appointed the manager of the prestigious Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia. He was not particularly suited for management, and left Philadelphia several times during his tenure to perform as far away as Australia. Unhappy stockholders made Lane the manager in 1861, renaming it Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theater.

John Drew returned to Philadelphia in 1862 and drew big audiences. Drew died suddenly at home in May of that year at age 34, after tripping and falling and fatally hitting his head during a party for daughter Georgiana.

After her husband's death Lane adopted a baby boy and named him Sidney. With a family to support on her own, Lane intensified her managerial work while also continuing to act. Her efficient production methods were very successful, and under her direction the theater became one of America's most successful stock companies. She held this position for the next 31 years, commanding great respect as the first female manager of a major American theater.

During the Civil War, many renowned performers appeared with Louisa Lane's stock company at the Arch Street Theatre including Edwin Forest, Charlotte Cushman, Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth. Lane Lane starred with John Wilkes Booth in Shakespeare's Macbeth, his last role before killing President Abraham Lincoln.

The Barrymores
Lane's son John Drew Jr. also became a stage actor in New York, where he met English actor Herbert Chamberlayne Blyth, who had scandalized his family by choosing a career in acting rather than the law. Taking the stage name Maurice Barrymore to spare his family the shame of having an actor in the family, he fled England in 1874 for New York.

John Drew Jr. introduced Maurice Barrymore to his sister Georgiana, which was the beginning of the Barrymore legend in the United States. Georgie married Barrymore on December 31, 1876 and gave to three children: Lionel (1878), Ethel (1879) and John Barrymore (1882).

In the years that followed, Maurice and Georgie Barrymore became one of the nation's most successful theatrical couples. With their parents so often away on tour, the Barrymore children grew up largely under their grandmother's care. When they were not at school, they were around the theater. Lane considered acting the 'family trade' and encouraged her grandchildren's participation.

In 1880 or 1881, Lane played Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals: "I forget how many miles... we traveled that season... but I know 19,000 and some." Her young grandsons Lionel and John Barrymore both made their stage debuts with their grandmother in The Rivals at her theater in Philadelphia.

The three Barrymore children treasured their vibrant mother's time at home and suffered greatly when Georgie Drew Barrymore died of tuberculosis at age 38, and their father left the family because he needed to mourn alone. Maurice Barrymore resumed his stage work, remarried exactly one year after his wife's death, and left his three children with their grandmother, who had raised them.

In 1893 Louisa Lane wrote:

The keenest sorrow of my life came to me... when my dearest daughter, Georgie, died in California, where she had gone in search of health, and only found death. My eldest daughter died some five years ago and now my son John [Drew Jr.] is the only remaining link with his father's memory. I look on him with considerable pride..."

Lane's other grandchildren were Georgie Drew Mendum an actress (from her daughter Louisa and Charles Mendum) and Louise Drew, also an actress (from her son John Drew Jr. and his wife Josephine) and S. Rankin Drew (Sidney's son with his wife Gladys Rankin).

In 1897 an ailing Louisa Drew spent the summer at her annual Larchmont, New York retreat with her grandsons Lionel and John Barrymore.

Louisa Lane died on August 31, 1897 at age 77. She was buried with her husband at Mount Vernon Cemetery in Philadelphia.

At the time of her death The New York Times wrote:

Mrs. John Drew probably had a longer career than any other actress. She was a remarkably versatile and intelligent actress, and although her efforts late in life were exclusively confined to comedy, yet she won respect in tragedy as well, and had, in fact, acted all sorts of characters from Little Pickle to Jane Shore, from one of the smothered Princes in Richard III to Rosalind and Ophelia.

Louisa Lane's Autobiographical Sketch of Mrs. John Drew was published in 1899. John Drew Jr. wrote:

The following retrospect of a life well spent in the pursuit of the most exacting of professions was written down for the immediate delectation and edification of the children and grandchildren of the gifted woman who penned it. I think, however, that when such an example may teach so much; where the life of an actress has been so full of incident and accident, and all resulting - through force of character and absolute intrinsic worth - in ultimate personal and professional regard and reverence, I think that the record of such a life, reaching over seventy years of dramatic history of our country, cannot be without interest to all who have at heart the development of art at its best...

The first of the Barrymore siblings to become a star, Ethel Barrymore made her Broadway debut in 1901 and first motion picture in 1914. A noted beauty, she rejected a marriage proposal from Winston Churchill before marrying Russell Griswold Colt in 1909. Barrymore won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1944 film None but the Lonely Heart opposite Cary Grant.

SOURCES
Wikipedia: John Drew
Wikipedia: Louisa Lane Drew
National Women's History Museum: Louisa Lane