Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr was an American-British novelist was known for her realistic descriptions, her intense historical research, and her strong sense of character development. Her most famous novel was Remember the Alamo (1888), where she depicted Texas history.
Background
Amelia was born March 29, 1831, in Ulverston, Lancashire, England as Amelia Edith Huddleston.
Her father was Reverend William Huddleston, a Wesleyan minister, her mother Mary (Singleton) Huddleston, they were of middling fortune but high education. She was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and refinement and early turned to books for recreation and instruction. When only nine years of age she became her father's companion and reader. Thus it was she read books far beyond her comprehension, but they tended to develop her mental qualities.
She writes in her memoir: ''My physical being was cared for by loving parents in sweet orderly home, and my mental life well fed by books stimulating the imagination.'' But by the time Barr reached sixteen, her father “lost his fortune,” as a contributor to the Feminist Companion to Literature in English explained.
Education
Amelia Edith Huddleston attended Normal School in Glasgow, where she learned the Stowe teaching method.
Career
Amelia Edith Huddleston began to teach at Norfolk to support her family, and she then went to the Normal School in Glasgow to train for a lifetime of such work.
While in Scotland, however, Barr met Robert Barr, her future husband. By 1853, Barr’s husband had gone bankrupt, forcing the two to relocate to the United States. Barr had become acquainted with Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher back in Scotland, and she soon began to write for Henry Ward Beecher’s newspapers. As Chabot explains, Barr worked both in Chicago and in Memphis, living briefly in Austin, Texas, before settling in Galveston. But in 1867 Barr’s husband died, leaving her little to support those of her children who had survived the journey. Barr took Mary, Lilly, and Alice, her three daughters, to Ridgewood, New Jersey in order to begin a new life as a writer.
Barr earned a small but sufficient income through her writing and is remembered for her sentimental historical novels more than her poetry. Barr’s work began to be accepted right away, and by 1876 some of her fiction was published in book form. By the 1880s, Barr had truly found her milieu: romances set in the early years of the United States. In part, this specialty derived from the demands of the market; American novels sold better. But the specialized genre seemed to suit Barr well.
Jan Vedder’s Wife, her early novel, was produced in 1885. As Chabot comments: “(the novel) shows the results of Barr’s painstaking research into the backgrounds and lifestyles of her characters, in this case, Dutch speech patterns, literary history, domestic life, and clothing styles.”
Her heroes are larger than life and more legendary than historical, but the work stands as an important reflection of lasting attitudes about the lore surrounding the Alamo and the emotionally charged roles of the major characters.” Remember the Alamo depicts such American figures as Davy Crockett and General Houston with obvious care; General Houston’s son even wrote to Barr after her novel was published to thank her for her impressive reconstruction of his father’s character and work.
Barr’s books were loved by her readers because, through them, she spoke as truly as she could. Moreover, she set high standards for writers of historical romance; her careful research made her books enlightening as well as fun. She died on March 10, 1919, in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York where she had moved in 1914.
Amelia Edith Barr is best known for her historical romances, many of which are set during Colonial times. Barr’s work contains hints of her moral and religious background, as well as hints of her appreciation of women’s status. Her tales, which were enormously popular during her lifetime, pleased many because of their rich historical detail, and because of their comfortably preachy moral tone. In addition to more than 60 novels, she also wrote stories for magazines and poetry.
"Though (Barr’s) narratives are often melodramatic and moralistic, containing little real suspense or humor, and her dialogue is not realistic, her characters are interesting and her pacing of events keeps the readers’ interest.'' - Bruce Guy Chabot
Connections
On 11 July 1850, Amelia Edith and a prosperous local wool merchant, Robert Barr, married. As Chabot recounted: “(Barr’s) family, who were Scots, opposed the marriage because Huddleston’s family was English and poor. Amelia Barr eventually opposed the marriages of her two eldest daughters, and the theme of parents opposing their daughters’ marriages is found in many of her novels.” Regardless of their parents’ disapproval, the two were married. Robert Barr and four their sons were stricken with yellow fever and died. Of their 12 children, several died young.
