Louise Clarke Pyrnelle was an Alabama writer. She was the writer of books for children.
Background
Pyrnelle was born Elizabeth Louise Clarke on June 19, 1850, on Ittabena plantation, near Uniontown, Alabama. She was a daughter of Richard, a physician, and Elizabeth Carson (Bates) Clarke.
After the Civil War, the family moved to Dallas County, where her father opened a medical practice.
Education
Louise attended Hammer Hall, in Montgomery, Alabama, and Mrs. Anna Randall Diehl’s College of Education in Long Island, New York. She also graduated from Professor McKay’s Delsarte Academy, in New York City.
Career
Pyrnelle traveled through New England giving performances reading dialect stories. In the late 1870s, Pyrnelle returned to Alabama and began working as a tutor. After her marriage in 1880, she and her husband moved around Alabama and Florida, teaching, tutoring, and working for the Episcopal Church. Her first book, Diddy, Dumps, and Tot was published in 1882. In the late 1880s, Pyrnelle and her husband moved to Browns to live in his childhood home. After her husband’s death in 1901, Pyrnelle moved to Birmingham, where she lived out the remainder of her life with a cousin and his wife. Her second book, Miss Li’l’ Tweetty, was published posthumously by her cousin’s wife.
“Louise-CIarke Pyrnelle’s works, once moderately popular are now anachronistic. Both the author and her books are products of another era, a time far removed from the life experiences of today’s children.” - Susan E. Miller, Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor
Connections
In 1880, Louise married John R. Pymelle. The man died in 1901.