05/02/2024
Unique history ‘Editoress’
Sarah Josepha Hale of Newport, New Hampshire was 34 years old and pregnant with her fifth child when her husband David died suddenly of pneumonia. With five young children to support, after a failed attempt to start a business, Sarah decided to try to make her living as a poet and novelist. Her 1827 novel Northwood contrasted life in the North and South in the early days of the American republic, promoting New England values and criticizing slavery and its effect on character. The book was well-received and firmly established her as one of the nation’s leading novelists. A poem titled “Mary’s Lamb,” from her second collection of poems, published in 1830, became an instant favorite and one of the world’s most popular children’s poems—known to us today as “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
With her literary success, Sarah was offered the position of editor of a new magazine called “Ladies Magazine” later renamed “American Ladies Magazine.” She would remain a highly esteemed editor (she always preferred the title “editress”) for the rest of her long and influential life.
In 1837 American Ladies Magazine was acquired by the owner of “Godey’s Lady’s Book” and Sarah became the editor. Under her leadership, Godey’s was the dominant and most influential women’s publication in America for decades and she became essentially the arbiter of fashion, literature, and culture among American women. She worked to promote women authors (while also promoting and publishing great male authors such as Longfellow, Emerson, and Poe), and was one of the founders of Vassar College. Several issues of Godey’s were devoted entirely to women authors, at a time such a thing would not have been conventional, and in 1854 she edited and published a biographical dictionary of American women writers.
For seventeen years Sarah lobbied relentlessly for the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, and her efforts are credited with eventually persuading Congress and President Lincoln to establish in 1863 “A National Day of Thanksgiving and Praise,”—the holiday that Americans continue to love and celebrate today—and earning her the title “the Mother of Thanksgiving.” (An aside—Thanksgiving became the third national holiday in the United States. Until 1863 the only national holidays were Washington’s birthday and the 4th of July.)
Among Sarah’s many other accomplishments and legacies were her work to fund and create the Bunker Hill monument, and to preserve and protect Mount Vernon.
Because of her conservativism on the issue of women’s suffrage, late in her life Sarah fell out of favor with many women intellectuals and her magazine began to decline. She retired in 1877, just before her 90th birthday, leaving these final words to her readers: “And now, having reached my ninetieth year, I must bid farewell to my countrywomen, with the hope that this work of half a century may be blessed to the furtherance of their happiness and usefulness in their Divinely-appointed sphere. New avenues for higher culture and for good works are opening before them, which fifty years ago were unknown. That they may improve these opportunities, and be faithful to their higher vocation, is my heartfelt prayer.”
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale died at her home in Philadelphia at age 90, on April 30, 1879, one hundred forty-five years ago today.
