Born: 5 March 1840, United States
Died: 24 January 1894
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Constance Fenimore Woolson, an American novelist, born in Claremont, N.H. She was a grandniece of James Feimore Cooper, as educated in Cleveland, Ohio, and spent the latter part of her life in Italy.
Her first literary work appeared in Harper’s Monthly in 1870, and here much of her subsequent writing was published. her important books are: The Old Stone House, East Angels, Jupiter Lights, Horace Chace, and The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories.
Edmund Clarence Stedman said of her: “No woman of rarer personal qualities, or with more decided gifts as a novelist, figured in her own generation of American writers.”
The following is excerpted from A Woman of the Century, edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A Livermore, published in 1893 by Charles Wells Moulton.
WOOLSON, Miss Constance Fenimore, author, born in Claremont, N. H., in 1848. She is the daughter of Charles Jarvis Woolson and Hannah Cooper Pomeroy Woolson. Her mother was a niece of James Fenimore Cooper, and a woman of literary talents of a high order. While Constance was a child, the family removed to Cleveland, Ohio.
She was educated in a young ladies’ seminary in Cleveland, and afterward studied in Madame Chegar>’s French school in New York City. Her father died in 1869. She soon afterward began to use her literary talents. In 1873 she removed with her mother to Florida, where they remained until 1879. In that year her mother died, and .Miss Woolson went to Europe. Of late years she has lived in Italy, but she has also visited Egypt and Greece. Her first books were two collections of short stories, called, respectively, “Castle Nowhere “and “Rodman the Keeper.” Her first novel, “Anne,” appeared as a serial in “Harper’s Magazine” in 1881. Her later novels have been “For the Major” (1883); “East Angels” (1886); “Jupiter Lights” (1889). And a fourth will appear in “Harper’s Magazine” in 1893. During the past few years she has spent a part of her time in England Some of her widely known single poems are “Me Too!” “Tom,” and Kentucky Belle,” which have been much used by elocutionists.