Wright, Mabel Osgood (1859–1934)

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Wright, Mabel Osgood (1859–1934)

American nature writer, conservationist, and novelist . Name variations: (pseudonym) Barbara. Born on January 26, 1859, in New York City; died from hypertensive myocardial disease on July 16, 1934, in Fairfield, Connecticut; daughter of Samuel Osgood (a cleric) and Ellen Haswell (Murdock) Osgood; educated at home and at a private school in New York City; married John Osborne Wright, on September 25, 1884 (died 1920).

Selected writings:

The Friendship of Nature (1894); Birdcraft: A Field Book of Two Hundred Song, Game, and Water Birds (1895); (with naturalist Elliot Coues) Citizen Bird (1897); Gray Lady and the Birds (1907); The Garden of a Commuter's Wife (1901); The Open Window; Poppea of the Post Office; The Woman Errant (1904); The Stranger at the Gate (1913); My New York (1926).

The youngest of three children, Mabel Osgood Wright was born in 1859 in New York City. Her father Reverend Samuel Osgood was a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Divinity School. Originally a Unitarian, he served as pastor for the Church of the Messiah in New York for two decades before taking orders in the Episcopal Church. Mabel's paternal grandfather, John Osgood, was one of the founders of Andover, Massachusetts, while her mother Ellen Haswell Osgood was related to Susanna Haswell Rowson , author of Charlotte Temple.

Mabel grew up in an atmosphere of learning and culture. Her father was well known for his translations of religious works, especially German theology. Moreover, her parents shared close associations with literary figures and other members of the New York cultural scene. It was supposedly during trips to the country that Mabel developed her lifelong interest in nature and the study of birds in particular. In 1884, at age 25, she married James Osborne Wright, an English rare-book dealer. After a long trip to England, they returned to the United States, settling in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Wright's first noted publication, "A New England May Day," appeared in the New York Evening Post in 1893. This and subsequent published pieces were collected and republished in book form in 1894 under the title The Friendship of Nature. In the several years that followed, Wright produced books that varied between impressionistic nature writing to actual field manuals for the study of birds. In the late 1890s, she began to advocate conservation. She also wrote books on plants and mammals, nature stories, and fables for children. When the magazine Bird-Lore began publication, Wright worked on projects for its executive and school departments from 1899 to 1910, thereafter serving as a contributing editor for the remainder of her life.

As her writing on conservation continued throughout the late 1890s, so did her work as an activist for the cause. In 1898, she helped to found the Connecticut Audubon Society, an organization of which she served as president for many years. She was also appointed director of the National Association of Audubon Societies, a post she held from 1905 to 1928. In 1901, she was made a full member of the American Ornithologists Union, an organization with which she had been affiliated since 1895. In addition to this work she also planned and constructed a Birdcraft Sanctuary on a tract of land near her home in Connecticut.

While highly regarded as an accomplished nature writer and prominent conservationist, Wright was also the author of several romance novels, which she published under her own name or under the pseudonym Barbara. Between 1901 and 1913, she wrote a total of ten such works, half being conventional in form and the others containing letters, social criticism, diary entries, natural history, and gardening advice. These largely unsuccessful works were often reviewed and reprinted, but lacked engaging settings, plots, characters, and dialogue. In 1926, she published a largely autobiographical book

entitled My New York. Mabel Wright died of a heart ailment on July 16, 1934, in Fairfield, Connecticut, at the age of 75.