Gratefulness

Sarah Josepha Hale

Author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, about a lamb that followed one of her students to school and waited patiently outside for her owner to come back out.  Sarah Josepha Buell Hale.  Not a suffragette – believed in traditional roles but nonetheless, pushed hard for women’s/girls education, women’s colleges, women doctors and teachers, safe working conditions for women. An abolitionist, as well. Daughter of the American revolution, she wrote until her death in her nineties.  Influenced an entire nation with her writing.  Began after her husband died and she had 5 babies to raise. Made hats by day, wrote poetry and her first novel, Northwoods, at night. The publisher of Ladies’ Magazine a popular women’s magazine that opened up mass culture to women’s participation.  Sarah realized she was in a powerful and important position.  Featuring fashion, household hints and educational articles, Sarah also published all the finest writers of the times:  Edgar Allen Poe, Harriet Beecher Stow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lydia Childs, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving. Every issue included an editorial by Sarah. 1837, she went to another magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, where she was a contributing editor until she retired at 89.