Sarah Josepha Hale - Biography

Biography

Hale was born in Newport, New Hampshire, to Captain Gordon Buell and Martha Whittlesay Buell. Her parents believed in equal education for both sexes. Early in her life, she was educated by her mother and her brother Horatio, who taught her what he had learned at Dartmouth. Hale was otherwise an autodidact.

While working as a schoolteacher in 1811, her father opened a tavern called The Rising Sun in Newport. She met David Hale the same year. The couple married at The Rising Sun on October 23, 1813, and had five children: David (1815), Horatio (1817), Frances (1819), Sarah (1820), William (1822). David Hale, a lawyer, died in 1822 and Sarah Josepha Hale wore black for the rest of her life as a sign of perpetual mourning.

In 1823, with the financial support of her late husband's Freemason lodge, she published a collection of her poems titled The Genius of Oblivion.

Her novel, published in the U.S. under the title Northwood: Life North and South and in London under the title A New England Tale, made her one of the first American women novelists and one of the first of either gender to write a book about slavery. The book, which espoused New England virtues as the model to follow for national prosperity, was immediately successful. The novel supported the relocation of the nation's African slaves to the colony of Liberia. In her introduction to the second edition (1852), Hale wrote; "The great error of those who would sever the Union rather than see a slave within its borders, is, that they forget the master is their brother, as well as the servant; and that the spirit which seeks to do good to all and evil to none is the only true Christian philanthropy." The premise of her book was that while slavery hurts and dehumanizes slaves absolutely, it also dehumanizes the masters and retards the psychological, moral and technological progress of their world.

The book garnered praise from Reverend John Blake, who asked Hale to move to Boston to serve as the editor of his journal, the Ladies' Magazine. She agreed and from 1828 until 1836 served as editor in Boston, though she preferred the title "editress". Hale hoped the magazine would help in educating women, as she wrote, "not that they may usurp the situation, or encroach on the prerogatives of man; but that each individual may lend her aid to the intellectual and moral character of those within her sphere". Her collection Poems for Our Children, which includes "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (originally titled "Mary's Lamb"), was published in 1830. The poem was written for children, an audience for which many women poets of this period were writing.

Hale founded the Seaman's Aid Society in 1833 to assist the surviving families of Boston sailors who died at sea.

Louis Antoine Godey of Philadelphia wanted to hire Hale as the editor of his journal Godey's Lady's Book. He bought the Ladies' Magazine, now renamed American Ladies' Magazine, and merged it with his journal. In 1837 Hale began working as editor of the expanded Godey's Lady's Book but insisted she edit from Boston while her youngest son, William, attended Harvard College. She remained editor at Godey's for forty years, retiring in 1877 when she was almost 90. During her tenure at Godey's, several important women contributed poetry and prose to the magazine, including Lydia Sigourney, Caroline Lee Hentz, Elizabeth F. Ellet, and Frances Sargent Osgood. Other notable contributors included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, William Gilmore Simms, and Nathaniel Parker Willis. During this time, she became one of the most important and influential arbiters of American taste. In its day, Godey's, with no significant competitors, had an influence unimaginable for any single publication in the 21st century. The magazine is credited with an ability to influence fashions not only for women's clothes, but also in domestic architecture. Godey's published house plans that were copied by home builders nationwide.

During this time, Hale wrote many novels and poems, publishing nearly fifty volumes by the end of her life. Beginning in the 1840s, she also edited several issues of the annual gift book The Opal.

Hale retired from editorial duties in 1877 at the age of 89. The same year, Thomas Edison spoke the opening lines of "Mary's Lamb" as the first speech ever recorded on his newly invented phonograph. Hale died at her home, 1413 Locust Street in Philadelphia, on April 30, 1879. She is buried in a simple grave in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.