Hildegarde Hawthorne (September 25, 1871 – December 10, 1952) was an American writer of supernatural and ghost stories, a poet and biographer.

Hildegarde Hawthorne
A white woman and a white man, seated. The woman, in profile, has her hair arranged in a bouffant updo, and is wearing a white blouse with puffy sleeves. The man, older, is bald, wears a mustache and a dark suit, and has his head bent to read a book.
Hildegarde Hawthorne and her father Julian Hawthorne, from a 1907 publication.
BornSeptember 25, 1871
New York, United States
DiedDecember 10, 1952
Danbury, Connecticut, United States
Other namesHildegarde Oskison
Occupations
  • Writer
  • poet
  • biographer
Spouse
(m. 1920)
Parent(s)Julian Hawthorne
Minnie Amelung

Family

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Born on September 25, 1871, in New York City, Hildegarde Hawthorne was the granddaughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) and eldest child of Julian Hawthorne (1846–1934) and Minnie Amelung Hawthorne.[1][2] She lived in Germany, England, and Jamaica as a child.[3]

Career

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At age sixteen Hildegarde began selling articles to the children's magazine St. Nicholas. Her supernatural short story "Perdita," was published in the March 1897 Harper's Magazine.[4] She wrote biographies of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Paine, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.[1]

Hawthorne also wrote travel narratives, including Old Seaport Towns of New England (1916),[5] Rambles in Old College Towns (1917),[6] Corsica: The Surprising Island (1926),[7] Romantic Cities of California (1939),[8] and Williamsburg, Old and New (1941).[9]

Hawthorne marched in the 1913 women's suffrage parade in New York City.[10] She lived in California in the 1920s and 1930s.[11]

A collection of ghost stories by Hawthorne, The Faded Garden, was published in 1985, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Her work is sometimes found in anthologies of American women's writing.[3] Hawthorne co-authored Enos Mills of the Rockies with Esther Burnell Mills.[12]

Personal life

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Hildegarde Hawthorne married John Milton Oskison in 1920. She died in 1952, aged 81 years, in Danbury, Connecticut.

References

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  1. ^ a b Hanley, Terence E. (2012-12-06). "Tellers of Weird Tales: Hildegarde Hawthorne (1871-1952)". Tellers of Weird Tales. Retrieved 2020-01-04.
  2. ^ "Genius of Writing in Hawthorne Kin". Lansing State Journal. 1930-03-21. p. 14. Retrieved 2020-01-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b Lundie, Catherine A. (1996). Restless Spirits: Ghost Stories by American Women, 1872-1926. Univ of Massachusetts Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-55849-056-7.
  4. ^ Hawthorne, Hildegarde (March 1897). "Perdita". Harper's Magazine. ISSN 0017-789X. Retrieved 2020-01-04.
  5. ^ Hawthorne, Hildegarde (1916). Old Seaport Towns of New England. Dodd, Mead.
  6. ^ Hawthorne, Hildegarde. (1917). Rambles in old college towns. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.
  7. ^ "Corsica the Surprising Island by Hildegarde Hawthorne". The Kelmscott Bookshop. Retrieved 2020-01-04.
  8. ^ Hawthorne, Hildegarde. Romantic Cities of California (1939), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  9. ^ Hawthorne, Hildegarde (1941). Williamsburg, Old and New. D. Appleton-Century Company.
  10. ^ Seger, Donna (2016-09-11). "Hildegarde Hawthorne Hits Salem". Streets of Salem. Retrieved 2020-01-04.
  11. ^ "Story Treat for Children at Ukiah Library". Ukiah Republican Press. 1935-05-15. p. 4. Retrieved 2020-01-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ Drummond, Alexander (1995). Enos Mills : citizen of nature. Nivot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-87081-407-5.
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