Susan Hale Collection (Mss. Gr. 88)

Biographical note

Susan Hale was born December 5, 1833, into a prominent literary family of Boston. She was the youngest of eight children. Her father, Nathan Hale, nephew of the revolutionary war hero of the same name, was editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser. Her mother, Sarah Preston Everett, was a sister of the orator, Edward Everett.

Susan's brother, Edward Everett Hale, was a leading Unitarian minister, a leader in the Social Gospel movement, and author of numerous articles, sermons, pamphlets, and short stories, most prominent of which was The Man Without a Country, written for the Atlantic Monthly in 1863, to inspire greater patriotism during the Civil War. Her sister, Lucretia, with whom she was very close, also wrote numerous books, many of them on religious subjects or on the art of needlework. Lucretia's major reputation, however, rests on a series of whimsical sketches first published in magazines, later collected into two classic books--The Peterkin Papers and The Last of the Peterkins. Susan's brothers, Nathan and Charles (who later became Consul General of the United States in Egypt), followed in the footsteps of their father, and were also editors of the Boston Daily Advertiser.

Susan became a teacher, an art student, a lecturer and public reader, an amateur actress, an avid traveler, and the manager of the family household in Matunuck, Rhode Island, for many years. She traveled extensively in Egypt, the Holy Land, all over Europe, throughout the West Indies, Mexico, and across the American continent. She was a prolific letter writer and, as one of her admirers wrote, her "letters constitute an intimate narrative of the life, activities and thoughts of a cultivated American woman of the highest and best type during an interesting period." She continued her letter writing and traveling until the very end of her life. She died in Matunuck, Rhode Island, in September 1910, at the age of 77.