Laura E. Richards

Laura E. Richards

Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards (February 27, 1850 - January 14, 1943) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a high-profile family. During her life, she wrote over 90 books, including children's, biographies, poetry, and others. A well-known children's poem for which she is noted is the literary nonsense verse Eletelephony.

Her father was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, an abolitionist and the founder of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind. Samuel Gridley Howe's famous pupil Laura Bridgman was Laura's namesake.

Julia Ward Howe, Laura's mother, was famous for writing the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

In 1871, Laura married Henry Richards. He would accept a management position in 1876 at his family's paper mill at Gardiner, Maine, where the couple moved with their three children. There is elementary school in Gardiner named after her, a Pre-Kindergarten through Second Grade school attended by students in Gardiner and South Gardiner.

In 1917, Laura won a Pulitzer Prize for Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, a biography, which she co-authored with her sister, Maud Howe Elliott. Her children's book Tirra Lirra won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1959.


Read more about Laura E. Richards:  Works

Famous quotes containing the words laura e, laura and/or richards:

    “Oh, nonio, Antonio!
    You’re far too bleak and bonio!
    And all that I wish,
    You singular fish,
    Is that you will quickly begonio.”
    Laura Elizabeth Richards (1850–1943)

    A new talker will often call her caregiver “mommy,” which makes parents worry that the child is confused about who is who. She isn’t. This is a case of limited vocabulary rather than mixed-up identities. When a child has only one word for the female person who takes care of her, calling both of them “mommy” is understandable.
    —Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)

    There are women in middle life, whose days are crowded with practical duties, physical strain, and moral responsibility ... they fail to see that some use of the mind, in solid reading or in study, would refresh them by its contrast with carking cares, and would prepare interest and pleasure for their later years. Such women often sink into depression, as their cares fall away from them, and many even become insane. They are mentally starved to death.
    —Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)