(The White Islander is an unchanged, high-quality reprint ...)
The White Islander is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1893. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.
The spirit of an Illinois town, and The little Renault: Two stories of Illinois at different periods
(The spirit of an Illinois town, and The little Renault - ...)
The spirit of an Illinois town, and The little Renault - Two stories of Illinois at different periods is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1897. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.
Mary Hartwell Catherwood was an American writer of popular historical romances, short stories, and poetry. Early in her career she published under her birth name, Mary Hartwell, and under the pseudonym Lewtrah (Hartwell spelled backwards, with the final letter dropped).
Background
Mary Hartwell Catherwood was born Mary Hartwell on December 16, 1847 in Luray, Ohio, one of three children of Marcus Hartwell and Pheba (Thompson) Hartwell. When she was nine, her father, a physician, moved the family to Milford, Illinois. Both of her parents died shortly afterward, and Mary and her siblings were raised by their maternal grandfather.
Education
Mary graduated in 1868 from Granville Female College in Granville, Ohio.
Career
Mary began teaching school at age fourteen, putting away money for her own college education. After four years tutoring children not much younger than herself, Catherwood finally earned enough to put herself through college.
She continued to teach for support until 1874 - she soon was able to publish her work in some of the more prestigious journals of the day. After ending her teaching career, Catherwood moved around the country: she lived successively in Newburgh, New York; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Milford, Illinois. Catherwood and her husband moved to Indianapolis, where they lived until 1882.
Her early work combined strands of critical realism and melodrama. She published many short stories and long serials in magazines such as the Atlantic and Lippincott's. Two of the early serials, A Woman in Armor (1875) and Craque-o-Doom (1881), were published as novels. She also wrote a number of juveniles in the early years, which, while not well plotted, contain some fine local color; the best of these, Rocky Fork (1882), remained in print until the middle of this century.
In 1889, with the publication of The Romance of Dollard, an historical romance based on the work of Francis Parkman, Catherwood took a new direction. From then until her death, she wrote romantic historical fiction, using the French settlement of the West and Canada as background.
She was working on a new novel, to be titled Tippicanoe, when in 1902 she died of cancer in Chicago, Illinois. She was buried in Floral Hill Cemetery in Hoopeston. Her papers are held by the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Ohioana Library in Columbus.
While remaining in the Midwest (in 1886 she helped found the Western Association of Writers), she turned her back on realistic treatment of Midwestern material. At her famous confrontation with Hamlin Garland at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, she argued for "the aristocratic in literature."
Quotations:
"Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends."
"There is no robbery so terrible as the robbery committed by those who think they are doing right."
"There should be a colossal mother going about the world to turn men over her lap and give them the slipper. They pine for it."
"To see men admitting that you are what you believe yourself to be, is one of the triumphs of existence."
"Nature protects us in our uttermost losses by a density through which conviction is slow to penetrate."
"One meets and wakes you to vivid life in an immortal hour. Thousands could not do it through eternity."
Connections
In 1877, Mary married James Steele Catherwood of Hoopeston, Illinois, a businessman and later a postmaster. They had a daughter, Hazel Catherwood.
Biography of Mary Hartwell Catherwood
Originally published in 1904, this is a facsimile, or exact, reprint of the original book. It contains a biography of noted novelist Mary Hartwell Catherwood of Ohio and Illinois.