Her father was a brother of the tenth president of Yale College, Theodore Dwight Woolsey [q. v. ], a nephew of the eighth, Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817 [q. v. ] and the uncle of the twelfth, Timothy Dwight, 1828-1916 [q. v. ].
As a student, first in private schools in Cleveland, later in Mrs. Hubbard's Boarding School in Hanover, N. H. , she was outstanding in her classes, delighting especially in history and literature.
She grew up in an attractive home on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, surrounded by an atmosphere of modest wealth and leisure.
Always vigorous, with a great gusto for life, she enjoyed almost equally the many books the house afforded and the acres of garden and woodland that enclosed it.
Upon their return they built a charming house in Newport, R. I.
There she lived for the rest of her life, except for summers spent at Northeast Harbor, Me. , at Onteora Park in the Catskills, and occasional visits to Europe.
Although she had amused herself from childhood by writing little tales and poems, she published nothing until after the Civil War.
Then books, poems, and magazine articles, signed "Susan Coolidge, " rapidly made her well known.
She contributed to many of the best known periodicals in America from 1870 to 1900.
She edited the Autobiography and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany (2 vols. , 1879), The Diary and Letters of Frances Burney, Madame d'Arblay (2 vols. , 1880), and Letters of Jane Austen (1892), wrote a Short History of the City of Philadelphia (1887), made occasional translations from the French, and acted as consulting reader for her publishers, Roberts Brothers.
Her tales were lively in tone, sensible, wholesome, and pleasingly moral.
Among the best known were: What Katy Did (1872), What Katy Did At School (1873), Mischief's Thanksgiving (1874), Nine Little Goslings (1875), For Summer Afternoons (1876), Eyebright (1879), A Guernsey Lily (1880), Cross Patch (1881), A Round Dozen (1883), A Little Country Girl (1885), What Katy Did Next (1886), Clover (1888), Just Sixteen (1889), In the High Valley (1891), The Barberry Bush (1893), Not Quite Eighteen (1894), An Old Convent School in Paris and Other Papers (1895).
She was a notable addition to any group because of her stimulating wit, her wide knowledge of books, and her ability to share with others her abounding zest for living.
[Intro.
to Last Verses, ante, G. Van R. Wickham, The Pioneer Families of Cleveland (1914); Outlook, Apr. 15, 1905; clippings and list of books from Little, Brown & Co. ; information from the family. ]
After her father's death in 1870, she spent two years abroad, chiefly in Italy, with her mother and sisters.
She was the author of three volumes of poetry: Verses (1880); A Few More Verses (1889); and Last Verses (1906), printed after her death with a memoir by her sister.
