Sarah Josepha Hale

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Standard Name: Hale, Sarah Josepha
Birth Name: Sarah Josepha Buell
Married Name: Sarah Josepha Hale
Pseudonym: A Lady of New-Hampshire
Pseudonym: Cornelia
SJH , nineteenth-century American woman of letters and one of that country's earliest female professional journalists, wrote or edited about fifty books. These include fiction, household advice, works for children (she is the author of the nursery-rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb), poetry, and biography. She won fame as the editor of Godey's Lady's Book and the encyclopaedic biographical dictionary Woman's Record. She offers a complicated, controversial, and in some respects feminist version of middle-class female sensibility as crucial to the republic.
Half-length painting of Sarah Josepha Hale by James Reid Lambdin, c. 1831. She stands at a slight turn against an outdoor nighttime scene, wearing a black dress that sits low on her shoulders, with white at the neckline. Her dark hair, pulled back, hangs in ringlets around her face.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Anna Eliza Bray
In 1855, AEB was included in Sarah Hale 's Woman's Record; or, Sketches of all Distinguished Women. The short entry included the editorial comment that Bray had set an example or fashion of literature...
Literary responses Catharine Macaulay
Macaulay therefore appeared in Memoirs of Eminent Female Writers, of All Ages and Countries by Anna Maria Lee , 1827, Woman's Record by Sarah Josepha Hale , 1853, and Clever Girls of our Time by...
Literary responses Fredrika Bremer
FB received medals from the Swedish Academy in 1831 and (a more prestigious one) in 1844. She had a beneficial effect both on the status of women in Sweden, and on English ideas of Sweden...
Literary responses Marie de Sévigné
For years MS was ridiculed for her incorrect orthography, but in fact her unorthodox spelling was modern. It was that advocated by the reformers, participants in a movement to reduce the number of unphonetic letters...
Literary responses Julia Pardoe
Sarah Josepha Hale commented that it seems to us wonderful a book could have been written by a woman with so little moral interest to commend it. She deplored its [t]rivial gossip, unfair views, and...
Literary responses Julia Pardoe
Sarah Josepha Hale , author of Woman's Record; or, Sketches of all Distinguished Women, noted that (nearly) all of JP 's works had been reprinted in the United States; yet she has never...
Literary responses Catherine Maria Grey
In Sarah Josepha Hale 's Woman's Record, 1853, she calls CMG a Triton among the minnows (that is, among novelist-entertainers), standing at the head of that class of novel-writers who administer to the amusement...
Literary responses Matilda Charlotte Houstoun
Though Sara Josepha Hale , author of Woman's Record, called Houstoun a lively, fluent writer,
Hale, Sarah Josepha. Woman’s Record. Harper and Brothers, 1855.
845
this is the first and last compliment offered in a review which is kept brief because even the...
Textual Production Matilda Hays
In 1847, while still in her twenties, MH was led by her desire to improve the lot of women to found a periodical. In the words of her later application for a Civil List pension:...

Timeline

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Texts

Hale, Sarah Josepha. Northwood. Bowles and Dearborn, 1827, 2 vols.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. Sketches of American Character. Putnam and Hunt, 1829.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. The Genius of Oblivion and other Original Poems. Jacob B. Moore, 1823.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. The Good Housekeeper. Weeks, Jordan, 1839.
Hale, Sarah Josepha, editor. The Ladies’ Wreath. Marsh, Capen, and Lyon, 1837.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. Woman’s Record. Harper and Brothers, 1853.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. Woman’s Record. Harper and Brothers, 1855.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. Woman’s Record. Facsimile of 2nd edition, Source Book Press, 1970.