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Grace Gallatin Thompson Seton was an American author and book designer.
Background
She was born on January 28, 1872 in Sacramento, California, United States, the daughter of Albert Gallatin, a financier, and Clemenzie Angelia Rhodes. Albert Gallatin was associated with Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins in the largest hardware, iron, and steel business on the Pacific Coast. The Gallatins were distantly related to Albert Gallatin, secretary of the treasury during the administrations of presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
When Grace was eight years old, her parents were divorced. Her mother later remarried, and Grace grew up in Detroit, Chicago, and the E. Her childhood was not a particularly happy one.
Education
She was educated privately and at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Career
In 1888, while in Paris with her mother, she began writing articles for the San Francisco Call and for the Examiner, under the pen name of Dorothy Dodge. She also contributed pieces to magazines in London, Paris, and New York.
Although she continued to write occasional articles and two nonfiction books, A Woman Tenderfoot in the Rockies (1900) and Nimrod's Wife (1907), Seton spent the bulk of her time for several decades assisting her husband with his literary and lecturing enterprises. She accompanied him on many camping and field trips, was a crack shot.
She also spent much time studying bookmaking, papermaking, and printing, and she largely designed the covers, title pages, and general appearance of some of Ernest Seton's earlier books. She also provided some editorial assistance and served as his literary agent, since he had little taste for business negotiations and she was more at home in cosmopolitan circles than he.
She also doubled as publicity agent for his lecture tours, which became a regular and increasingly important source of family income. During these years she was also increasingly involved in a variety of social activities, writers' organizations, and the women's rights movement.
She was president of Pen and Brush (1898 - 1913), vice-president and later president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (1910 - 1920), and, with her husband, a founder in 1910 of the Girl Pioneers, which subsequently became the Camp Fire Girls.
Following the outbreak of World War I, Seton was engaged in relief work. She also wrote articles for the British Ministry of Information, undertook some work for the French Service de Sante Militaire, served as secretary of the Connecticut Division of the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense, and sold Liberty Loan Bonds in Washington.
During the 1920's and 1930's, she traveled in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, spending much time in remote regions. She headed expeditions in northeastern India and Indochina. She wrote A Woman Tenderfoor in Egypt (1923), Chinese Lanterns (1924), and Yes, Lady Saheb (1925), works that reflected her interests not only in travel and exploration but in the role of women in various societies, the occult, Hinduism, metaphysics, theosophy, and Oriental mysticism.
She visited Brazil as historian of the Field Museum Expedition. After completing that assignment, she continued on to Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru, giving particular attention to the ancient civilizations of the region. She was much in demand as a lecturer on her travel experiences.
Seton had charge of an international conference of women writers of which she was the organizer at the Century of Progress Exposition (1933) and, in conjunction with the conference, arranged an exhibit of 3, 000 books written by women in thirty-seven nations. This collection later became the core of the Biblioteca Feminina at Northwestern University's Deering Library. Seton was a delegate to the Pacific Conference for Women in Honolulu (1928, 1931, 1934) and Vancouver. (1937).
Seaton served as an American representative to the International Council of Women Triennial Conference in Paris (1934). In 1938 she headed the United States delegation to the International Council of Women's Jubilee meetings in Edinburgh.
From 1950 until 1955 she edited the Poetry Booklet.
In her later years Seton suffered increasingly from arthritis. She usually spent the summer months at her home in Stamford, Connecticut, and after 1940, wintered in Florida. She died in Palm Beach.
Achievements
Grace Gallatin Seton was the author of the famous books: A Woman Tenderfoot in Egypt (1923), Chinese Lanterns (1924), Yes, Lady Saheb (1925), and Poison Arrows (1938), The Singing Traveler (1947). Serving the president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, the chair National Council of Women of the United States, she established the Biblioteca Femina, a collection of volumes by women from all over the world. She also helped organize an international conference of women writers at the Century of Progress Exposition. She received three French decorations for her war services.
She actively supported the presidential candidacies of Herbert Hoover in 1928 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1944, and was instrumental in improving the status of women members of the Republican National Committee.
Membership
Seton was one of eight charter members of the Society of Women Geographers in 1925.
Personality
Seton was short and plump. She was effective at handling people and an excellent organizer. A social being by nature, she possessed a fine sense of humor.
Quotes from others about the person
Her husband wrote, "she met all kinds of danger with unflinching nerve and was always calm and clear-headed. "
Connections
While on board ship traveling to France with her mother in 1894, she met Ernest Thompson Seton, the artist and naturalist. They saw much of each other during the next two years in Paris, where he was studying painting. They were married on June 1, 1896, soon after their return to New York. They had an only child, the novelist Anya Seton.
Seton and her husband were frequently away from each other while traveling and lecturing. Divergent tastes and interests were among the factors that led to the dissolution of their marriage in 1935.
