She was educated at the Portland High School for Girls.
She was at one time professor of belles-lettres at the Mount Auburn Ladies' Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, "lady-principal" of the high school in Haverhill, Massachussets, and an assistant in the high school in Concord, N. H.
They lived in Portland until 1862, when they moved to Concord.
In 1868 they went to live in Boston.
She visited Europe in 1883-84 and in 1891-92, and lectured upon her return on "Historic Cities of Spain. "
She was a frequent contributor to Boston periodicals, where she employed the technique of the informal essay with considerable skill and charm, and published two volumes of collected sketches, Browsing among Books (1881), and George Eliot and Her Heroines (1886).
She served in 1886 as official poetess at the centennial celebration in Portland, Me. , and again in 1888 at the dedication of the Fowler Library in Concord, N. H.
[The most important source is a Goold family MS. by Nathan Goold in the Colls.
of the Me.
Hist.
Soc.
See also Who's Who in America, 1906-07; Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century (1893); obituary in Boston Transcript, Feb. 7, 1921. ]
She contributed to the Boston Journal a series of essays which in 1873 she collected into one volume, Woman in American Society.
She lectured on English literature in important eastern cities, as well as on the Pacific coast during a visit to California.
Mrs. Woolson's married life was spent in travel, lecturing, teaching, and literary and social activity.
After the death of her husband in 1896 she engaged much less in public activity.
Woolson, Abba Louisa Goold, (Apr. 30, 1838 - Feb. 6, 1921), Maine 1838 1921 Female Author Lecturer Teacher General author, lecturer, and teacher, was born in Windham, Me., the second child of William and Nabby Tukey (Clark) Goold.
In the year of her graduation (1856) she married the principal of the school, Moses Woolson, a native of Concord, N. H., seventeen years her senior.
John Greenleaf Whittier, a personal friend, wrote the foreword, referring to the articles as "gracefully written, yet with a certain robust strength,--wise, timely, and suggestive, the well-considered words of a clear-sighted, healthful-minded woman."
