Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation

MSS 8266, Elizabeth Stoddard letters to Ella Furman, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This collection was purchased by the Small Special Collections Library from Robert H. Rubin at the University of Virginia Library on 24 June, 2019.

Biographical / Historical

Elizabeth Drew Barrett Stoddard (1823-1902) was a much recognized American writer, as well as a regular contributor to the most popular literary periodicals of the day. She was greatly admired in her lifetime by writers including Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Dean Howell. She did not become a financial success but was popular again after her death in the 1960's.She and her husband, poet Richard Henry Stoddard, lived in New York where their home became a salon for some of the most literary figures of the day.

Stoddard wrote three novels, including "The Morgensons " and many short stories, essays, children's tales, and poems. She was described as being in advance of her time by a generation and was compared with Henrik Ibsen rather than to the romantic period of fiction. Her work questioned the conventions of gender roles and social and religious norms in a quest for sexual, spiritual, and economic autonomy. She explored the conflict between a woman's instinct, passion, and will and the social taboos, family allegiance, and traditional New England restraint that inhibited her. It was as a poet that she gained her highest fame, according to the great English critic, Leslie Stephen, who also highly praised her book, "Temple House."

C. D. Warner, et al., Critical and Biographical Introduction of Elizabeth Stoddard wrote that before she was a dramatist, she was a psychologist, looking with unquestioning eyes into life's problem... She was a realist before the word had been defined."

https://www.bartleby.com/library/prose/4949.html

Ella Anna Farman Pratt (1837-1907) was the editor of Wide Awake .

Content Description

Three autograph letters of Elizabeth Stoddard signed, to Ella Farman, author and editor of Wide Awake discussing the literary periodical press, payments to authors, and other matters. Written legibly in ink on three folded sheets of "E.D.B.S." (Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard) embossed stationary. This collection is an addition to Elizabeth Stoddard letters in the Barrett Collection (MSS 8266, 8266-a).

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• letters (correspondence)