MC 145

1 box (.33 cu. ft.)

About Eleanor Hallowell Abbott:

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (1872-1958) was born in Cambridge, Mass. As the daughter of clergyman Edward Abbott and granddaughter of Jacob Abbott – a well-known children’s author and friend to Longfellow and Lowell – she grew up in a decidedly religious and scholarly environment. She studied at Radcliffe, worked as a secretary and teacher at Lowell State Normal School, and wrote poems and short stories. In 1908 she married Dr. Fordyce Coburn and moved to Wilton, N.H. At about the same time, Harper’s, Collier’s, and The Delineator accepted some of her works for publication. She soon acquired national recognition and went on to publish 14 books and more than 75 magazine stories. Her fiction, which was unabashedly romantic and almost exclusively focused on young women, was frequently described as charming and was particularly popular in the 1910s and 1920s.

A partial list of Abbott’s books includes:

• Molly Make-Believe [1910]
• The Sick-A-Bed Lady (and other tales) [1911]
• The White Linen Nurse [1913]
• Little Eve Edgarton [1914]
• The Ne’er Do Much [1918]
• Love and Mrs. Kendrue [1919]
• Silver Moon [1923]
• But Once A Year: Christmas Stories [1928]
• Being Little In Cambridge When Everyone Else Was Big [1936].

About Eleanor Hallowell Abbott’s Papers:

The Eleanor Hallowell Abbott collection primarily contains typescripts of a number of Abbott’s short stories, including “Axiom Is That Axiom Does” (n.d.), “Being Little in Cambridge When Everyone Else Was Big” (1936), “Hi-There” (1932), “Proud People Under Old Umbrellas” – later titled “The Last Word” (1932), “The Screaming Girl” (n.d.), “Someone to Sit with Reggie” (n.d.), and an untitled manuscript. The collection also includes a letter from Abbott to a “Mr. Chapman” regarding her Christmas story “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Hogs,” a scrapbook containing her story “The Sick-A-Bed Lady,” which was published in Collier’s, and promotional advertisements for her book Molly Make-Believe (1910).