Talk:E. D. E. N. Southworth

Hidden Hand - 1865

The Library of Congress indicates our author published the text in 1865:

LC Control No.: 41030642

Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)

Personal Name: Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte, 1819-1899.

Uniform Title: Hidden hand. Swedish

Main Title: Capitola : skildringar från lifvet i Amerika / af Gray Nick ; öfversättning af Turdus Merula.

Published/Created: Stockholm : P.A. Huldberg, [1865]

Related Names: Qvanten, Aurora von, 1818-1907.

Description: 539 p. ; 18 cm.

Notes: Chapters I-XXVII are a translation of: The hidden hand; the remaining chapters are probably a translation of its sequel: Capitolas peril.

LC Classification: PS2892.H5 S8

Language Code: swe eng

Other System No.: (OCoLC)29058423

Quality Code: premarc

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Yours truly,

--Ludvikus 22:12, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Possible lapse of Neutral Point of View

Quote from article: "E.D.E.N. Southworth moved out to Wisconsin after graduating from Washington, D.C.. She studied in a school kept by her stepfather, Joshua L. Henshaw, and in 1840 married inventor Frederick H. Southworth, of Utica, New York. After 1843 she returned to Washington, D.C. without her husband. She began to write stories to support herself and her children when her husband deserted her in 1844."

As I read this, E.D.E.N. deserted her husband in 1843 by choosing to move back to Washington DC, leaving him behind. Frederick gave her a year to rethink her decision, and, when she did not return, he reciprocated and affirmed their split. So why does the article say "...when her husband deserted her in 1844"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.87.162.107 (talk) 04:50, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

• See this account from 1853:[1] "she began writing in 1844 to support herself and her children after Mr. Southworth deserted her four years into their marriage." And [2] " In 1844, when E.D.E.N. was pregnant with their second child, Frederick abandoned his family to seek fortune in South America. Faced with the task of raising and supporting her children alone, E.D.E.N. returned to Washington, D.C., to resume her teaching career."--Milowent • ^hasspoken 06:23, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Prospect Cottage section

Below is the text I deleted in case someone would like to take a morsel or two from it. It seemed completely out of proportion to its actual importance, particularly with its two blockquotes. Scrawlspacer (talk) 21:14, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

== Prospect Cottage ==

It is difficult to determine exactly when Southworth moved into Prospect Cottage or even when it was first built. Some place it as early as 1853, after she signed the contract with Robert Bonner and The New York Ledger. The house was designed in the Carpenter Gothic style with gables, overhanging roof, and decorative barge-boards. This was a very fashionable style before the American Civil War.

The National Magazine in 1905, recorded this description:

...[T]he cottage was half hidden among the branches of the trees that embowered it and looked as cosy as a dove-cote in its airy grove. It hung upon the very brink of the hill; its lower story is below the street in the rear of it, but jutting out into a terraced garden, from whose ultimate hedges one might have cast oneself headlong into the canal that borders the edge of the northern shore of the Potomac. Its western windows were bathed in the sunset glow and the river, far below it, was a river of life and light; its eastern windows opened on breezy heights where the goats skipped nimbly in a tree-filled, vacant lot; the south verandah, up among the treetops, hung like a fairy gallery before the Virginia slopes, and in the deep valley between them flowed the noble Potomac, famed in song and story....

A newspaper article called ‘Mrs. Southworth at Home’ reported on the novelists ‘cottage’ in 1886:

“In staid old Georgetown, on a high bluff overlooking the Potomac and with the imposing stone college of the Society of Jesus filling up the background, stands a quaint little cottage, its many peaked gables, its trailing vines and bright flowers, and its roomy verandas suggesting the quiet and repose so dear to the literary worker, writes a Washington correspondent. The view from the veranda is superb. You can see a wide expanse of the river, Fort Myer, the Aqueduct Bridge and a goodly stretch of the “sacred soil,” well wooded and picturesquely broken. The sight on a summer evening is worthy the brush of a Claude. On the river hundreds of craft of every description shoot gaily about -- racing shells, steam launches, and larger vessels pleasantly diversify the scene.”

Aside from an extended visit with her daughter in the Hudson Valley, she spent the rest of her life, beginning in 1862, living and writing in Prospect Cottage. She died there in 1899. Six years after Southworth's death, a Washington Post article from 1905, remarked that "Now the sitting-room that Mrs. Southworth planned is an ice cream parlor, and the handsome, old drawing-room serves as a cafe. On the verandas visitors sit and chat as they wait for the cars. Their talk is of Mrs. Southworth, and it is claimed that they cut great splinters out of the porch and side of the house, and even capture the bugs and grasshoppers in the yard for souvenirs...."

References

External links

I've removed the following from External links per WP:ELNO#1, but place them here for potential use in future article development. The Further reading section should also be critically evaluated, with only the most unique perspectives or valuable sources listed (see MOS:FURTHER, WP:Further reading, and {{Too much further reading}}): Wikipedia articles needn't and shouldn't be directories to every book or article on a subject. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:16, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

• The Prolific Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth and her Georgetown Cottage
• "The best-selling Washington writer you've never heard of" by Eliza McGraw, Washington Post, March 3, 2016
• 1905 Magazine Article with portrait photo