Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford

Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (April 3, 1835–August 14, 1921) was a notable American writer remembered for her novels, poems and detective stories.

Biography

Born in Calais, Maine, she moved with her parents to Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1849. She attended the Putnam Free School in Newburyport, and Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire from 1853 to 1855. When her parents became invalids, of necessity she set to work as a writer, sometimes laboring fifteen hours a day. Spofford's gothic romances were set apart by luxuriant descriptions, and an unconventional handling of female stereotypes of the day.

In 1859, she submitted to "Atlantic Monthly" a story about Parisian life entitled "In a Cellar." The magazine's editor, James Russell Lowell, at first believed the story to be a translation, and withheld it from publication. Reassured that it was original, he published it, and it established her reputation. She became a welcome contributor to periodicals. In 1865, she married Richard S. Spofford, a Boston lawyer, and they resided on Deer Island overlooking the Merrimack River at Amesbury, where she died.

When Thomas Wentworth Higginson asked Emily Dickinson whether she had read Spofford's work "Circumstance," Dickinson replied, "I read Miss Prescott's "Circumstance", but it followed me in the dark, so I avoided her." ("Atlantic Monthly", October 1891).

Books

* "Sir Rohan's Ghost", 1860
* "The Amber Gods, and Other Stories", 1863, republished 1989
* "Azarian: An Episode", 1864
* "New England Legends", 1871
* "The Thief in the Night", 1872
* "Art Decoration Applied to Furniture", 1878
* "The Servant Girl Question", 1881
* "Marquis of Carabas", 1882
* "Poems", 1882
* "Hester Stanley at St. Mark's", 1883
* "Ballads About Authors", 1887
* "A Scarlet Poppy, and Other Stories", 1894
* "The Ray of Displacement and other stories"
* "Old Madame, and Other Tragedies", 1900
* "Old Washington", 1906
* "The Fairy Changeling", 1910
* "A Little Book of Friends", 1916
* "The Elder's People", 1920

Further reading

*
* "The Amber Gods," and Other Stories," edited with an introduction by Alfred Bendixen. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.
* Different works of hers at Project Gutenberg Australia: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606581.txt
* "The Moonstone Mass and Others" edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson (Ash-Tree Press, 2000) a selection of Spofford's best ghost stories with an informative introduction by Salmonson.

External links

*