Miller, Olive Thorne (1831–1918)

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Miller, Olive Thorne (1831–1918)

American nature writer and author of children's books. Name variations: Harriet Mann; Harriet M. Miller. Born Harriet Mann on June 25, 1831, in Auburn, New York; died on December 25, 1918, in Los Angeles, California; only daughter of Seth Hunt Mann (a banker) and Mary (Holbrook) Mann; education included a "select school" in Ohio; married Watts Miller (a businessman), on August 15, 1854; children: Harriet Mabel Miller (b. 1856); Charles Watts Miller (b. 1858); Mary Mann Miller (b. 1859); Robert Erle Miller (b. 1868).

Selected writings:

Little Folks in Feathers and Fur, and Others in Neither (1875); Nimpo's Troubles (1879); Queer Pets at Marcy's (1880); Little People of Asia (1882); Bird-Ways (1885); In Nesting Time (1888); Four Handed Folk (1890); The Woman's Club (1891); Little Brothers of the Air (1892); A Bird-Lover in the West (1894); The First Book of Birds (1899); The Second Book of Birds: Bird Families (1901); True Bird Stories from My Notebook (1903); With the Birds in Maine (1904); Kristy's Queer Christmas (1904); Kristy's Surprise Party (1905); Kristy's Rainy-day Picnic (1906); What Happened to Barbara (1907); The Bird Our Brother: A Contribution to the Study of the Bird as He Is in Life (1908); The Children's Book of Birds (1915).

Born Harriet Mann on June 25, 1831, the eldest of four children, Olive Thorne Miller grew up to become one of the most popular writers about birds in her time. She was also a political activist who urged people to stop the commercial use of bird feathers, and exhorted women to enter the field of ornithology. A shy child, Miller enjoyed reading and began writing at an early age, while spending her childhood in Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois and elsewhere due to her father's belief that success was always just around the corner.

In 1854, she married Watts Miller, a businessman, in Rock Island, Illinois, and soon settled with him in Chicago. Because her husband's family, as she noted, believed that "the dish-cloth was mightier than the pen," she gave up writing for a time and devoted her days to raising her four children, born between 1856 and 1868. She eventually returned to writing, and in 1870 one of her "sugar-coated pills of knowledge" for children appeared as an article in a religious weekly. In the next decade, she wrote hundreds of essays for children. Her stories for children were usually signed Olive Thorne, and her nature sketches were signed Harriet M. Miller. Many of these sketches went into the book Little Folks in Feathers and Fur (1875), while a set of stories appeared as Nimpo's Troubles in 1879. It is generally acknowledged that Miller's children's stories have no special merit, but her books of nature sketches, for children and adults alike, are still read.

Miller and her family moved to Brooklyn, New York, around the time her first book was published. In 1880, her friend Sara A. Hubbard , who was visiting from Chicago, took her bird-watching in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Miller was fascinated, and her devotion to the study of birds would increase to such an extent that she turned one room of her house into a wintertime aviary, allowing birds to fly free within it and peck at the walls while she watched (she would then release the birds in the spring.) Bird-Ways, published in 1885 under the pen name of Olive Thorne Miller, was the result of her first efforts at bird-watching and was aimed at adults. In Nesting Time (1888) and Little Brothers of the Air (1892) followed. Her best books on birds are considered to be A Bird-Lover in the West (1894) and With the Birds in Maine (1904). Miller also lectured on ornithology, in her later years shedding her shyness and becoming a self-assured, well-spoken woman. Her books were popular with the public, but were also respected by professional ornithologists for the close observation and accuracy she brought to the subject. An active member of Sorosis and the Brooklyn Woman's Club (an interest reflected in her 1891 book The Woman's Club), and a close friend of Florence Merriam Bailey , who also wrote about birds, Miller strongly encouraged other women to pursue ornithology. She considered them "particularly suited" to do so, believing that women were endowed with the "infinite patience, perseverance, untiring devotion,…quick eye and ear, and…sympathetic heart" necessary for the task.

After her husband's death in 1904, Olive Thorne Miller moved to Los Angeles, where she wrote the last six of her books. The Children's Book of Birds, her final publication, was released in 1915, three years before she died at age 88.