Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott ( Mrs. Fordyce Coburn ) (born September 22, 1872 in Cambridge , Massachusetts , † June 4, 1958 in Portsmouth , Hampshire ) was an American poet , novelist and children's book author.

Life

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott was the youngest daughter of clergy Edward Abbott and Clara Davis Abbott. Like her father, her uncle Lyman Abbott was a member of the clergy. Her paternal grandfather was the well-known American youth writer Jacob Abbott . She grew up in a religious and scholarly atmosphere and attended private schools in her hometown of Cambridge. Although she did not like the lessons and was one of the poorer students, the teachers encouraged her first literary attempts. She later attended Radcliffe College . For four years she was a private secretary and English teacher at Lowell State Normal School in Massachusetts.

In November 1908, Abbott married the doctor Fordyce Coburn. Soon after, the couple moved to an estate near Wilton, New Hampshire . With her husband, who supported her in her writing ambitions, she led a harmonious marriage, from which however no children emerged. Her hobbies included a. Horse riding and hiking.

Abbott's early poems and short stories received no attention. Shortly after their marriage, she had her first literary successes. In 1909 the major American magazine Harper's Magazine published two of its longer poems. The next year her best-known novel Molly Make-Believe was published . In total, she wrote 14 novels and 75 short stories. Her works, which were successful in the 1910s and 1920s, always have a very romantic, albeit often banal plot and always end well. Its protagonists are bold, nervous and talkative young girls; their male figures, on the other hand, are more characterized by serenity, steadfastness and patient endurance of suffering. Critics often consider the actions and designs of their novels to be very unrealistic. Abbott published Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1921 . In 1936, her autobiography Being Little was published in Cambridge When Everyone Else Was Big , in which she describes very emotionally her conservative childhood in Cambridge.

In old age Abbott suffered from chronic arthritis . She was 85 years old and died in 1958.

Works

• Molly Make-Believe (1910)
• The Sick-A-Bed- Lady, and Other Stories (1911)
• White Linen Nurse (1913)
• Little Eve Edgarton (1914)
• The Indiscreet Letter (1915)
• The Stingy Receiver (1917)
• The Ne'er-Do-Much (1918)
• Love and Mrs. Kendrue (1919)
• Old Dad (1919)
• Peace on Earth (1920)
• Rainy Week (1921)
• Fairy Prince, and Other Stories (1922)
• Silver Moon (1923)
• Love and the Ladies (1928)
• But Once a Year: Christmas Stories (1928)
• The Minister Who Kicked the Cat, and Other Stories (1932)
• Being Little in Cambridge When Everyone Else Was Big (autobiography, 1936)

literature

• Mary Sue D. Schusky: Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell. In: Dictionary of American Biography. Supplement (those who died between 1955 and 1960), p. 2f.