Sarah "Sally" Sayward Barrell Keating Wood was an American novelist.
Background
Sarah Sayward Barrell Keating Wood was born on October 1, 1759, in York, Maine, the first daughter of Sarah Sayward Barrell and the British army officer Nathaniel Barrell, but was heavily influenced by her wealthy grandfather, Judge Jonathan Sayward. Sarah Wood was brought up in her grandfather's home, in the society of influential and cultivated relatives and friends.
Career
She wrote and published four novels, besides probably contributing anonymously to the Massachusetts Magazine and other periodicals. Her first novel, Julia and the Illuminated Baron (Portsmouth, 1800), has reference to the supposed subversive activities of the secret society, the Illuminati, in France. It has the distinction of being perhaps the most thoroughgoing example in American literature of the Gothic romance of the Radcliffe type. Her second book, Dorval: or the Speculator, is disappointing because the promised "wholly American" work, satirizing the contemporary furor over land speculation, is weakened by the pointless, rambling, and improbable narrative. These were followed by Amelia, or the Influence of Virtue, an Old Man's Story (1802), which appeared, like the others, anonymously at Portsmouth, and by Ferdinand and Elmira: a Russian Story (Baltimore, 1804), a highly fanciful tale of tangled loves, mistaken identity, and overworked coincidence.
Until some years after the death of her second husband in 1811, she lived in Wiscasset. Thereafter until 1830 she lived near her son, Capt. Richard Keating, in Portland. There she published the first volume of Tales of the Night (1827), containing two long narratives, "Storms and Sunshine; or the House on the Hill, " a story of domestic misfortunes succeeded by returning prosperity, and "The Hermitage, " in which faithful love is rewarded by union after an intervening marriage. No second volume appeared, and Mrs. Wood is said, after the appearance of Scott's novels, to have destroyed much of her own manuscript in self-disparagement.
For three years after 1830 she lived in New York City with her son, Captain Keating. In the summer after his tragic death in January 1833, when his ship was crushed in the night by floating ice in New York Harbor, she returned to Maine to live with a granddaughter at Kennebunk. In her last years she wrote several interesting reminiscent sketches for friends and descendants.
Sarah Wood died on January 6, 1855, at Kennebunk, Maine.
(Julia and the Illuminated Baron, the first American gothi...)
Personality
At Portland Madam Wood, as she was usually called, was somewhat of a celebrity because of her literary reputation, her keen mind, and her distinctive costume. She is described as wearing customarily a "high turban or cap and when she went out a plain black bonnet so far forward as to nearly hide her features. "
Connections
On November 23, 1778, Sarah Sayward Barrell married Richard Keating, a clerk of Judge Sayward's. The young couple lived happily together, in the house given them as Judge Sayward's wedding present. Here their three children, two daughters and a son, were born, the last of them four months after the untimely death of Mr. Keating, June 23, 1783.
On October 28, 1804, Mrs. Keating married Gen. Abiel Wood, a wealthy widower of Wiscasset, in 1811 he died as well.