Molly Elliot Seawell was an early American historian, a popular and widely read writer in her time.
Background
Molly Elliot was born on October 23, 1860 on a plantation in Gloucester County, Virginia, United States, in a house, "The Shelter, " which had been a Revolutionary hospital. She was daughter of John Tyler and Frances (Jackson) Seawell.
Her mother was a native of Baltimore; her father, a nephew of President Tyler, was a lawyer and a student of the classics. Her childhood in the tidewater region of Chesapeake Bay influenced the settings of the novels she was later to write, and an uncle, Joseph Seawell, who lived with the family, contributed to her future literary material by his stories of his seafaring experiences.
Education
With occasional intervals at school for instruction in the standard subjects, Molly Elliot was educated in an informal fashion at home, where riding, dancing, and the conduct of a household were given much consideration.
Career
At her father's death, Molly Elliot and her mother removed first to Norfolk, Virginia, then to Washington, District of Columbia, where she spent the remainder of her life. At Norfolk about 1886 she began to write sketches and stories. After a trip to Europe, which added to her experience and to her material, she became a contributor to several magazines, using pen-names at first but finally overcoming her reticence sufficiently to write under her own name. In Washington she contributed correspondence about politics to New York papers.
Her first novel, Hale-Weston (1889), written for Lippincott's Magazine, was very successful and was translated into German. Her first juvenile story, Little Jarvis (1890), a navy tale, won a Youth's Companion prize and fixed her prepossession for naval subjects.
As she became experienced she developed a number of types of fiction: stories of the American navy, of Virginia before and after the Civil War, of French life in Paris and the provinces, of English historical periods, of Washington society.
Her Twelve Naval Captains (1897) is said to have been used as a textbook in the United States Naval Academy. Certain public questions of her day interested her, and some of them supplied her with subjects for her writing. Despotism and Democracy (1903) is a discussion of Washington society and politics; "On the Absence of the Creative Faculty in Women, " published in the Critic, November 29, 1891, and The Ladies' Battle (1911) present her view of woman's suffrage, to which she was opposed.
Though sometimes slight, her plots are usually adequate and often full of amusing incidents; her style is sprightly and humorous and, though her popularity has waned. For many years her home in Washington was a meeting-place for writers and artists, but after the deaths of her mother and sister and the failure of her own health she led a retired life.
She died at her Washington home.