Jeannette Ritchie Hadermann Walworth

Background

Jeannette Ritchie Hadermann Walworth was born in Philadelphia, Pa. , the fourth daughter of Matilda Norman, a native of Baltimore, and Charles Julius Hadermann von Winsingen, a German political exile. When Jeannette was a child the family moved to Mississippi, where for a time her father taught modern languages at Jefferson College, Washington, Miss. , near Natchez.

Education

Her education was informal but effective, her father being her chief instructor.

Career

At the age of sixteen she became a governess on a Louisiana plantation, and she seems to have remained so occupied until the Civil War. At the close of the war she went to New Orleans to enter journalism. She wrote a few articles signed "Ann Atom, " for the Sunday edition of the New Orleans Times, but although they attracted attention they paid nothing. She entrusted her first novel to a New York firm which failed before the book appeared. In 1870, however, her Forgiven at Last was published by Lippincott, and it was followed shortly by Dead Men's Shoes (1872). These books were written on a plantation in Tensas Parish, La. Encouraged by Samuel R. Crocker of the Boston Literary World, she was able to have her next novel, Against the World, published in Boston by Shepard & Gill in 1873. In that year she married Major Douglas Walworth, of Natchez, Miss. , a widower. The marriage was childless. For the next five years she lived on her husband's plantation in Arkansas, and here wrote Heavy Yokes (1876) and Nobody's Business (1878). After a stay in Memphis, where she contributed to the Memphis Appeal over the name "Mother Goose, " she moved with her husband to New York. Here the Major planned to establish a law practice, and Mrs. Walworth hoped to find a more ready market for her books. For the next sixteen years she was a very productive writer. In April 1884 she contributed "The Natchez Indians - A Lost Tribe" to the Magazine of American History. Judge Albion W. Tourgée published one of her novels in The Continent (June 6-27, 1883), recommending it as a picture of Southern life. Some of her tales appeared in Frank Leslie's periodicals; Scruples (1886) came out in the Boston Beacon before appearing as a book in Cassell's Rainbow Series; Lippincott's Magazine and the Overland Monthly also printed her work. A Mormon study, The Bar Sinister (1885), was reprinted with several variations in title; Southern Silhouettes, after serial publication in the New York Evening Post, appeared as a book in 1887 and was well received. In 1889 she published History of New York in Words of One Syllable. About 1888 the Walworths returned to Natchez, where Major Walworth became editor of the Democrat. Books by Mrs. Walworth continued to appear until 1898, several being reprinted two or more times. After the death of her husband in 1915, she lived with relatives in New Orleans. Much of her writing was, in her own opinion, on a sub-literary level. She utilized familiar scenes and conditions as the background for stories which, in plot and character, rarely rose above melodrama. Her style was clear but unimpressive.

Achievements

• Her best work, Southern Silhouettes, a series of post-war sketches, was notably effective. In some of her stories, such as The New Man at Rossmere (1886) and A Little Radical (1889), she displayed an unusual penetration into the changing social and industrial conditions in the S.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The bar-sinister: a social study

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • Baldy's Point

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • The Martlett Seal

    (This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before ...)

  • Baldy's Point, microform

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Personality

She was a shrewd observer and a witty and interesting companion.

Connections

She was married.

Father:

Charles Julius Hadermann von Winsingen

Mother:

Matilda Norman