LETTER: Autograph letter signed, "Susan Coolidge," to "My dear Mrs. Holmes," December 7, 1890, Newport.
ALS, "Susan Coolidge," to "My dear Mrs. Holmes," December 7, 1890, Newport.
8vo.; one leaf, one page.
Coolidge sends thanks for a Christmas gift.
Susan Coolidge, born in Ohio Sarah Chauncy Woolsey to a family closely connected to Yale University, was a Civil War nurse turned writer. Her first novel, A New Year's Bargain (1871), was largely ignored, but she found success when her editor, whom she shared with Louisa May Alcott whose Little Women had been an instant hit in 1868, urged her to mimic Alcott's subject matter and style. She produced the autobiographical What Katy Did in 1872 and four sequels, documenting the life of one Katy Carr from childhood, through European travels, to marriage though Coolidge herself never married: What Katy Did At School (1873), What Katy Did Next (1886), Clover (1888) and In The High Valley (1891). The names of the first three books were a pun on the name of the insect, the "katydid," whose grasshopper-like noises may well have inspired Coolidge. In addition to this children's series, she edited the correspondence between Jane Austen and Fanny Burney.
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