Susan Coolidge

Susan Coolidge was born in Ohio on 29 January 1835, into the influential Dwight family of New England, whose ancestors were among the first settlers in Massachusetts in the seventeenth century.

She fell in love with literature and writing from a young age. However, she only began circulating her work after the end of the American Civil War, during which time she served as a nurse. She started her literary career by publishing short stories and poems in magazines, under her now-famous pseudonym. Coolidge also took a keen interest in women’s literature, editing collections of writing by women artists.

Susan Coolidge never married and lived in her family’s house in Newport, Rhode Island, until her death on 9 April 1905.