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)

    “The books may say that nine-month-olds crawl, say their first words, and are afraid of strangers. Your exuberantly concrete and special nine-month-old hasn’t read them. She may be walking already, not saying a word and smiling gleefully at every stranger she sees. . . . You can support her best by helping her learn what she’s trying to learn, not what the books say a typical child ought to be learning.”
    —Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)

    “A political place with no power, only influence, is not to my taste.”
    —Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)