Sarah Josepha Hale

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Sarah Josepha Hale

Sarah Josepha Hale
Born October 24, 1788
Newport, New Hampshire
Died March 30, 1879 (aged 90)
Occupation Poet, editor

Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (October 23, 1788 - April 30, 1879) was an American writer. She is well known as the author of the popular nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb." [1]

Contents

[edit] Life and career

Hale was born in Newport, New Hampshire to Captain Gordon Buell and Martha Whittlesay Buell. Early on in her life, she was educated by her mother and her brother Horatio who taught her what he had learned at Dartmouth; later on, Hale was an autodidact. In 1813, she married David Hale (-1822), a lawyer and Freemason, with whom she had five children. In 1823, with the monetary support of her (then late) husband's Freemason lodge, she published a collection of her poems entitled The Genius of Oblivion. Her novel, Northwood, was the first novel about slavery. [2]

From 1827 until 1836, Hale served as editor of Ladies' Magazine in Boston. Her collection Poems for Our Children, which includes the now-famous "Mary Had a Little Lamb", was published in 1830.[3] In 1837 she began working as editor of Godey's Lady's Book in Philadelphia. She remained editor at Godey's for forty years, retiring almost at the age of ninety in 1877.[4] She also edited several issues of the annual gift book The Opal.

In its day, Godey's, with no significant competitors, had an influence unimaginable for any single publication today. The magazine is credited with an ability to influence fashions not only for women's clothes, but also in domestic architecture. Godey's published house plans that were copied by home builders nationwide. Perhaps more significantly, Mrs. Hale was a strong advocate for a number of causes. Her championship of education for women began with her editorship of the Ladies' Magazine and continued until she retired. For example, her influence, which included no fewer than seventeen articles and editorials devoted to the subject, is credited with helping make the founding of Vassar College acceptable to a public unaccustomed to the idea of women's education[5] She opened the pages of the magazine to Catherine Beecher, Emma Willard and other early advocates of education for women.

Hale was also a strong advocate of the American nation and union. In the 1820's and 30's, a time when other American Magazines merely compiled and reprinted articles form British periodicals, Hale was among the leaders of a group of American editors who insisted on publishing American writers. In practical terms, this meant that she sometimes personally wrote half of the material published in the Ladies' Magazine. In later years, it meant that she particularly liked to publish fiction with American themes, the frontier, Thanksgiving, and historical fiction set during the American Revolution. Hale adamantly opposed slavery, but she was equally devoted to the Union. She campaigned in her pages for a unified American culture and nation, frequently running stories in which southerners and northerners fought together against the British, or in which a southerner and a northerner fell in love and married.

Hale's support for Thanksgiving was an effective part of her campaign for American culture. In her youth, Thanksgiving was a holiday celebrated exclusively in the New England States, much as mardi Gras is confined to New Orleans today. Hale campaigned successfully to have Governors of other states issue Thanksgiving proclamations. She also published instructions on how to cook Thanksgiving dinner and celebrate the holiday, and many hundreds of Thanksgiving stories. She is the individual most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday.[6]

During this time, Hale wrote many novels and poems, publishing nearly fifty volumes of work by the end of her life.

She is buried in a simple grave in the Laurel Hill Cemetery, Ridge Ave., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [7]

Grave of Sarah Josepha Hale in Laurel Hill Cemetery.
Grave of Sarah Josepha Hale in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

[edit] Legacy

Hale is credited as one of the major forces behind the declaration of Thanksgiving as a national holiday in the United States, which had previously been celebrated only in New England.[8] She also helped raise money in Boston for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument.[9]


Liberty Ship #1538 (1943-1972) was named in her honor.

A prestigious literary prize, the Sarah Josepha Hale Award is named for her. [10]

[edit] Books

Northwood, or, Life North and South (1852)

[edit] Further reading

  • Dubois, Muriel L.To My Countrywomen: The Life of Sarah Josepha Hale. Apprentice Shop Books, LLC, Bedford, NH, 2006.
  • Fryatt, Norma R. Sarah Josepha Hale: The Life and Times of a Nineteenth-Century Woman. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1975.
  • Finley, Ruth E. The Lady of Godey's. Philadelphia & London: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1931.
  • Baym, Nina. "Onward Christian Women: Sarah J. Hale's History of the World," The New England Quarterly. Vol. 63, No. 2. June 1990 p. 249.
  • Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1938-68.)
  • Okker, Patricia. Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of Nineteenth-century American Women Editors. (Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, c1995.)
  • Rogers, Sherbrooke. Sarah Josepha Hale: A New England Pioneer, 1788-1879. (Grantham, N.H. : Tompson & Rutter, 1985.
  • Tonkovich, Nicole. Domesticity with a Difference: The Nonfiction of Catharine Beecher, Sarah J. Hale, Fanny Fern, and Margaret Fuller. (Jackson, Miss. : University Press of Mississippi, c1997.)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Anderson, Laurie, "Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving", 2002. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing.
  2. ^ http://www.newport.lib.nh.us/HaleAw.html
  3. ^ Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 283. ISBN 086576008X
  4. ^ Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. The Literary History of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1906. p. 230
  5. ^ http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/index.php/Vassar_Female_College_and_Sarah_Josepha_Hale
  6. ^ Appelbaum, Diana Karter. Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, An American History. New York, Facts on File, 1984
  7. ^ Findagrave web site
  8. ^ Appelbaum, Diana Karter. Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, An American History. New York, Facts on File, 1984
  9. ^ Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. The Literary History of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1906. p. 230
  10. ^ http://www.newport.lib.nh.us/HaleAw.html

[edit] External links