Hale, Lucretia Peabody (1820–1900)

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Hale, Lucretia Peabody (1820–1900)

American author of The Peterkin Papers . Born on September 2, 1820, in Boston, Massachusetts; died on June 12, 1900, in Belmont, Massachusetts; second daughter and third of the 11 children (7 of whom survived infancy) of Nathan Hale (a lawyer and owner-editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser) and Sarah Preston (Everett) Hale (a writer); sister of writer Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) and artist Susan Hale (1833–1910); attended Susan Whitney's dame school; attended Elizabeth Peabody's school; graduated from the George B. Emerson School for Young Ladies; never married; no children.

Selected works:

(with E.E. Hale) Margaret Percival in America (1850); Seven Stormy Sundays (1959); Struggle for Life (1861); The Lord's Supper and Its observance (1866); The Service of Sorrow (1967); Six of One by Half a Dozen of the Other (with E.E. Hale et al., 1872); The Wolf at the Door (1877); Designs in Outline for Art-Needlework (1879); More Stitches for Decorative Embroidery (1879); Point-Lace: A Guide to Lace-Work (1879); The Peterkin Papers (1880); The Art of Knitting (1881); The Last of the Peterkins, with Others of Their Kin (1886); Fagots for the Fireside (1888); An Uncloseted Skeleton (with E.L. Bynner, 1888); Stories for Children (1892); (with B. Whitman) Sunday School Stories (n.d.).

A descendent of the famous American patriot Nathan Hale on her father's side, Lucretia Peabody Hale grew up in a distinguished literary family. Her mother Sarah Preston Hale was a writer, and her father Nathan was owner-editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser. Privately educated at Elizabeth Palmer Peabody 's school, among other institutions, Hale also spent much time at home due to ill health. In addition to numerous family-oriented activities, which included printing two family newspapers, she collaborated with her brother Edward Everett Hale on her first novel, Margaret Percival in America, a religious story which they published in 1850. That same year, the family fell upon hard times and Hale's father was forced to move his wife and unmarried daughters, Lucretia and Susan Hale , to a small house in Brookline. To help the family through mounting financial hardship, Hale turned to writing in earnest. She began publishing articles in the Atlantic Monthly in 1858, the first of which was a fanciful tale called "The Queen of the Red Chessman," in which a willful red chess queen comes to life. In the course of the next several years, Hale produced a novel, Struggle for Life (1961), and several books of devotional readings.

Hale gained her reputation, however, with her whimsical sketches about the Peterkins, beginning with "That Lady Who Put Salt in Her Coffee," which was published in Our Young Folks in April 1868. Subsequent stories eventually filled two books, The Peterkin Papers (1880) and The Last of the Peterkins (1886), both of which became extremely popular with children and adults and still enjoy a following. The amusing tales center on a family of proper Bostonians named Peterkin, a well-meaning albeit scatterbrained clan who is rescued from a variety of exaggerated disasters by "the lady from Philadelphia," a summer visitor who offers common sense solutions to their endless difficulties. Hale created the first Peterkin stories while vacationing, to entertain a friend's small daughter. The later stories were often inspired by her own family experiences.

In 1866, after the death of her parents, Hale and her sister Susan spent a year in Egypt, where her brother Charles was the American consul general, and then spent another two years with friends in Keene, New Hampshire. Upon her return to Boston, Hale lived alone for the first time in a succession of small apartments. In addition to assisting Edward in editing his journal, Old and New Magazine, she became involved in various educational and charitable causes. In 1874, she was one of the first six women, including Lucretia Crocker (1829–1886) and Abby W. May (1829–1888), elected to the Boston School Committee. She served two terms, until 1876, during which time she advocated the establishment of kindergartens and vacation schools. She also occasionally took students into her home for instruction.

Hale's later writings included a series of game and sewing books, and a story called An Uncloseted Skeleton (1888), written in collaboration with Edwin L. Bynner. One of her last works, The New Harry and Lucy (1892), a novel that traces the adventures of a couple who meet and marry during a tour of Boston in the fall of 1891, was written with her brother Edward. Hale spent her last years in ill health and died at the age of 80 in the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.