Background

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott was born on September 22, 1872 in Cambridge, Massachussets, United States, the daughter of clergyman Edward Abbott and Clara Davis. Jacob Abbott, author of the Rollo books, was her paternal grandfather, and the popular clergyman Lyman Abbott, an uncle.

Education

Abbott attended private schools in Cambridge. She disliked school and recalled that recess was her favorite part of the school day. Although she was at the bottom of her class in most subjects, her teachers encouraged her special talent for English composition. She filled notebooks with many stories but did not finish them. Later she took writing courses at Radcliffe College.

Career

For a short time Abbott dabbled in free-lance advertising in Boston and considered the offer of a job as an advertising copywriter in New York. For four years she was employed as a private secretary and teacher of English composition at the state normal school in Lowell, Massachussets.

Describing her literary background, she wrote that she was weaned on a bottle of ink. After much discouragement and many rejections, Harper's Magazine accepted two poems and Lippincott's and Smart Set published stories. Abbott wrote at night, after a day of other work, and initially used a pseudonym. Often she thought of a title and then fashioned the plot around it. Abbott's best-known novel was Molly Make-Believe (1910). This two-year best-seller told the romantic story of a young man, wintering in Florida while recovering from a serious illness, and his fiancee, who perpetrates a good-natured deception on him for his diversion. Other novels included The White Linen Nurse (1913), Little Eve Edgarton (1914), The Indiscreet Letter (1915), and many other.

During her career she frequently wrote about invalids and received many letters from them expressing gratitude for her sympathetic treatment. Abbott's most enduring book, Being Little in Cambridge When Everyone Else Was Big (1936), first published in the Ladies' Home Journal, described Cambridge in the 1870's and 1880's. Her recollections, warm and emotional, were filled with the delights and disappointments of her conservative Boston childhood. She asserted that since childhood she had had a consciousness of the actual event of her birth and that throughout her life she never forgot any "emotionalized experience. " Abbott wrote with little regard for critics' appraisals. While some reviewers described her writing style as effusive and contorted, with strained syntax and excessive metaphors, others called it sincere, original, and refreshing - the expression of a vivid imagination. Her works, basically light fiction, had a wide following among readers who sought writing that was neither "literary" nor taxing.

In later years she suffered from chronic arthritis. She died in 1958 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Achievements

• Abbott is known as a rather prolific author, writing seventy-five short stories and fourteen romantic novels. Three of her short stories won prizes offered by Collier's and Delineator. "Sick-a-Bed Lady" won a $1, 000 prize offered by Collier's and established Abbott as a writer.

Works

More photos

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  • The Complete Works of Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (8 Complete Works of Eleanor Hallowell Abbott Including Fairy Prince and Other Stories, Little Eve Edgarton, The White Linen Nurse, And More)

    (8 Complete Works of Eleanor Hallowell Abbott Fairy Princ...)

  • The Sick-a-Bed Lady

    (THE Sick-A-Bed Lady lived in a huge old-fashioned mahogan...)

  • The Complete Collection of Eleanor Hallowell Abbott and George Eliot (Huge Collection Including Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Fairy Prince and Other Stories, Rainy Week, And More)

    (Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was a...)

  • The White Linen Nurse

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Little Eve Edgarton

    (Whimsical and witty, 'Little Eve Edgarton' is a tale abou...)

  • Molly Make-Believe

    (Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this clas...)

  • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott’s Collected Works : Molly Make-Believe, The Sick-a-Bed Lady , The White Linen Nurse, Plus More!( 7 Works )

    (Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (Mrs. Fordyce Coburn), born in C...)

  • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, Selected Works (Illustrated): (Seven books with illustrations)

    (Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (Mrs. Fordyce Coburn) (September...)

  • book

Interests

• Abbott enjoyed outdoor life, particularly fishing, hunting, hiking, gardening, and horseback riding.

Connections

In November 1908 Abbott married Fordyce Coburn, a physician; they had no children. After a brief period in Lowell, Massachussets, they moved to a farm near Wilton, New Hampshire.

Father:

Edward Abbott

Mother:

Clara Davis

Spouse:

Fordyce Coburn

References

• The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Woman Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present