Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930)
Author of A New England Nun, and Other Stories
About the Author
Author Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852. She attended Mount Holyoke College for one year and later finished her education at West Brattleboro Seminary. As a teenager, she began writing stories and verse for children in order to help support her family. show more She continued to write short stories, novels, poetry, and children's works throughout her life. Her best known works are A Humble Romance and Other Stories, A New England Nun and Other Stories, and Pembroke. Her characters were usually older women who confronted and asserted their independence in the changing social structure of rural New England. In April 1926, the American Academy of Arts and Letters presented her with the first William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction. She was also inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She died of a heart attack on March 13, 1930 in Metuchen, New Jersey. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Disambiguation Notice:
Birth Date note: Per the old book, "A Woman of the Century", birth date is listed as 1862. Per the website "A Celebration of Women Writers", birth date is listed as 1852. "A History of English Literature in a Series of Biographical Sketches" also gives the date as 1862. Leah Glasser's biography cites 1852 as a birth date and has Eleanor starting school aged seven in 1859.
Image credit: from Wikipedia
Works by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
Luella Miller 7 copies
Lost Ghosts: The Complete Weird Stories of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (Classics of Gothic Horror) (2017) 6 copies
The Long Arm 5 copies
The Lost Ghost 3 copies
Understudies : short stories 3 copies
The winning lady, and others 3 copies
Sweet Williams 2 copies
LibriVox Ghost Story Collection 001 2 copies
A Far-Away Melody and other stories 2 copies
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Five Novelettes, 'Evelina's Garden,… (2014) 1 copy
The Cat 1 copy
[No title] 1 copy
A Moral Exigency 1 copy
The Christmas Monks 1 copy
The soldier man 1 copy
Some of our neighbours 1 copy
Luella Miller : 1902 1 copy
The Prism 1 copy
Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas 1 copy
THE DEBTOR 1 copy
Pembroke; a novel 1 copy
The Revolt of Mother 1 copy
LibriVox Christmas Short Works Collection 2020 — Author — 1 copy
Associated Works
Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the 17th Century to the Present (1994) — Contributor — 447 copies
Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories (2010) — Contributor — 292 copies
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps (2009) — Contributor — 265 copies
Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown: A Treasury of Bizarre Tales Old and New (1993) — Contributor — 196 copies
The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime: Forgotten Cops and Private Eyes from the Time of Sherlock Holmes (2011) — Contributor — 196 copies
What Did Miss Darrington See? : An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction (1989) — Contributor — 117 copies
In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Horror, 1816-1914 (2015) — Contributor — 91 copies
H.P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural: 19 Classics of the Macabre, Chosen by the Master of Horror Himself (2006) — Contributor — 88 copies
Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers: 1852-1923 (2020) — Contributor — 83 copies
Frankenstein Dreams: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Science Fiction (The Connoisseur's Collections) (2017) — Contributor — 61 copies
The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories (The Connoisseur's Collections) (1900) — Contributor — 57 copies
The Darker Sex: Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre by Victorian Women Writers (2009) — Contributor — 49 copies
With Wings: An Anthology of Literature by and about Women with Disabilities (1987) — Contributor — 43 copies
The Lifted Veil: The Book of Fantastic Literature by Women 1800-World War II (1806) — Contributor — 42 copies
Ladies of the Gothics: Tales of Romance and Terror by the Gentle Sex (1975) — Contributor — 40 copies
Out of the Best Books: An Anthology of Literature, Vol. 2: Love, Marriage, and the Family (1966) — Contributor — 39 copies
The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult: Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories That Started It All (2014) — Contributor — 37 copies
Women's Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937 (Handheld Classics) (2020) — Contributor — 33 copies
The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe and Other Stories of Women and Fatness (2003) — Contributor — 27 copies
Ladies of Horror: Two Centuries of Supernatural Stories by the Gentle Sex (1971) — Contributor — 24 copies
Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories: American (1908) — Contributor — 15 copies
Haunted Women: The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers (1985) — Contributor — 15 copies
Masters of the Macabre: An Anthology of Mystery, Horror, and Detection (1975) — Contributor — 13 copies
Great American Ghost Stories: Chilling Tales by Poe, Bierce, Hawthorne and Others (2008) — Contributor — 10 copies
Jurgen and the Censor: Report of the Emergency Committee Organized to Protest Against the Suppression of James Branch… (1920) — Contributor — 10 copies
The Origins of Science Fiction (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection) (2022) — Contributor — 9 copies
Representative American Short Stories — Contributor — 5 copies
Shadows from a Veiled Creation: Classic Tales of Supernatural Fiction in the Christian Tradition (2006) — Contributor — 2 copies
Ode to Boy: Vol. 2: An Anthology of Same-Sex Attraction in Literature from the 19th Century Through the First World War (2014) — Contributor — 2 copies
America through the short story — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins
- Other names
- Wilkins, Mary E.
Wilkins, Mary
Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins - Birthdate
- 1852-10-31
- Date of death
- 1930-03-13
- Burial location
- Hillside Cemetery, Scotch Plains, New Jersey, USA
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Randolph, Massachusetts, USA
- Place of death
- Metuchen, New Jersey, USA
- Cause of death
- heart attack
- Places of residence
- Randolph, Massachusetts, USA
Brattleboro, Vermont, USA
Metuchen, New Jersey, USA - Education
- Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mt. Holyoke College)
Mrs. Hosford’s Glenwood Seminary (West Brattleboro, Vermont, USA) - Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
poet
ghost story writer - Relationships
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. (employer)
- Awards and honors
- William Dean Howells Medal (1925)
National Institute of Arts and Letters (1926)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature ∙ 1926) - Short biography
- Mary Ella Wilkins was born to a devout Congregationalist family in Randolph, Massachusetts. Her father, a carpenter, moved the family to Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1867 to open a dry-goods store. She attended Brattleboro High School and then studied at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College), in 1870-71. After her father's business failed, her mother Eleanor had to go into service in the home of a local clergyman, taking Mary with her. Mary worked as a secretary to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and began writing children’s stories and poems. Following the death of her mother in 1880, she adopted the middle name Eleanor. In 1883, she published her first story for adults in a Boston newspaper. Within a few years, she was recognized as an important and influential writer. Mary Eleanor Wilkins moved back to Randolph to live with friends after her father died. In their secluded farmhouse, she wrote her stories and novels steadily for 20 years, often working ten hours a day. Her best-known collection may be A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). In 1902, at age 49, she married Charles M. Freeman and moved to Metuchen, New Jersey, with him. They separated in 1922. Much of Mary's work depicts the life she knew in New England hill towns and often features spinster heroines or abandoned children. Some of her ghost stories are often included in anthologies, including "Luella Miller" and "The Wind in the Rose-Bush." Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Edith Wharton became the first women inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1926.
- Disambiguation notice
- Birth Date note: Per the old book, "A Woman of the Century", birth date is listed as 1862. Per the website "A Celebration of Women Writers", birth date is listed as 1852. "A History of English Literature in a Series of Biographical Sketches" also gives the date as 1862. Leah Glasser's biography cites 1852 as a birth date and has Eleanor starting school aged seven in 1859.
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THE DEEP ONES: "The Shadows on the Wall" by Mary E. Wilkins in The Weird Tradition (January 2013)
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Statistics
- Works
- 95
- Also by
- 134
- Members
- 848
- Popularity
- #30,161
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 21
- ISBNs
- 335
- Languages
- 6
- Favorited
- 5