Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s early letters document the intellectual development of a prolific woman writer from her childhood in the early national period through the 1813 death of her father Theodore Sedgwick, a Federalist member of Congress and Massachusetts supreme court judge. The youngest daughter in a family of seven siblings, Sedgwick practiced epistolary conventions in her early letters while introducing her lifelong theme of balancing personal and family expectations with the obligation to write. As Sedgwick reported in her later autobiography, she felt that she lacked a satisfactory formal education, but “these great deficiencies” were offset by the quality of her homelife. Her adolescent years were marked by her mother’s chronic ill health and death in 1807, her father’s remarriage in 1808, and her engagement with her siblings’ growing families throughout the period. By 1812, as a 22-year old republican woman reflecting on her social position, CMS felt the call of a “life dignified by usefulness” and compared her father’s contributions to her own potential: “You may benefit a Nation my dear Papa, & I may improve the condition of a fellow being” (1 Mar. 1812).
Letters from Sedgwick’s pre-publication adulthood demonstrate her intellectual and religious development as she grappled with events both personal and national. Her siblings became the central focus of her domestic life, and the Sedgwicks’ experiences with “the market of matrimony” (15 Aug. 1813) provide intriguing fodder for epistolary debate. Sedgwick rejected at least two marriage proposals in her twenties, one in 1812 and another in 1819. In the summer of 1821, she traveled to Niagara Falls and Montreal and began keeping a journal. As Sedgwick developed her authorial persona and worked on her first novel, her full-throated dedication to family, female relationships, and personal usefulness emerged as primary concerns. Sedgwick’s letters also become more philosophical, and her lifelong dedication to republican service and intellectual Unitarianism come into focus. Sedgwick explains her sense of vocation to her lifelong friend Eliza Cabot Follen: “my ministry must be one of watchfulness and steady devotion, and all those cares that love teaches, and can pay without being asked” (15 Nov 1822).
With her first novel A New-England Tale (1822), Sedgwick established herself as a professional writer, and she published four additional literary novels and more than 30 stories during this period. As a dedicated family woman, who also chose to be single and an author, she constructed domestic arrangements that complemented her writing career. She lived in the homes of her brothers and sisters-in-law in Stockbridge, Lenox, and New York City, deepening her relationships with her siblings as well as caring for the children and contributing to their education. Redwood, her second novel, received “much more praise and celebrity than [she] expected” (18 Oct. 1824). As her fame grew, she continued to find her spiritual home in Unitarianism, while her range of acquaintances expanded to include artists, politicians, reformers, educators, and intellectuals. Sedgwick began to travel more widely, visiting friends in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia, and making extended trips to Washington DC and the South. As a measure of her celebrity, she was selected for inclusion in the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans (1834), the only woman included other than Martha Washington. The period was also punctuated by “the real and bitter sorrows that cloud our life” (13 Mar. 1830), including the deaths of her sister Eliza, her childhood nurse Elizabeth Freeman, and her brother Harry.
As a member of the American literati, Sedgwick navigated transatlantic fame while experiencing personal loss at home. She pursued new avenues of benevolent activism in her life and writings. Letters from this period will be available soon.
Sedgwick’s engagement with mid-nineteenth-century reform movements informed her writings during this period. Her primary residences continued to be New York City and the Berkshires. She deepened her relationships with her niece Kate Minot and other members of the next generation of Sedgwicks. Letters from this era will be available at a future date.
During the Civil War period, Sedgwick grappled with issues of national importance alongside personal losses at home. She published her last book and final story and, after a medical crisis, resigned as Director of the New York Women’s Prison Association. In her final years, she resided with Kate Minot and her family near Boston. Letters from this era will be available at a future date.
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- Travel and Touring, US
- Family Relations (Sedgwick Family)
- Authorship
- Literature and History
- Holidays and Celebrations
- Press
- Charity
- Family Residences (Sedgwick Family)
- Social Life and Networks
- Public Service
- Leisure Activities
- Arts, Visual and Performing
- Education
- Clothing
It is yet entirely uncertain when Lizy leaves us -- Robert has not returned from Albany, and no letters from him yesterday so that we are quite in the dark about his movements -- but as you mind paying for letters less than any other personal expense I thought I might as well get one ready against the mail goes tomorrow -- Elizth came from Lenox yesterday, bag & baggage, intending to go off tomorrow with R & his wife -- The weather is so fine that Chs is anxious to have her go at any rate but I think she will prefer waiting --
We had a famous time at the Pittsfield fair -- The Ashburners went up with us -- The Major's speech proved very acceptable to all Classes, and for once in his life I beleive he was quite satisfied that he had made a successful effort to benefit and to please -- There were some gleamins of humor in it, & as that is not in the Major's line, they seemed probably the brighter for playing on a dark surface -- -- It is quite gratifying since Theodore has taken up the business of doing good as his vocation, to have him meet with an opportunity -- and satisfied 2 that he has improved it -- I don't know that any thing short of some great discovery or invention by which
I shall enclose you Bryant's ode which electrified us all -- is it not a chef d'oeuvre? It seems to me the strictest ballance in the Critics sanctuary wouldnot find it defective -- tho' I am told that Parson Shepard thinks he could make three or four improvements -- a sure ballance that indeed must be in which he has been accustomed to weigh his own tallents against others -- --
I feel dearest Jeanie as if you knew me so well and all about me, that I neednot tell you how much I have been gratified by Miss Edgeworths kind notice of the mite 2 I have cast in to the great treasury, from my poverty -- -- -- I trust the feelings it has excited are not of the perishable progeny of vanity -- I like the style of the letter extremely -- its unaffectedness and simplicity -- It is a great event, and a great distinction in my humble, equal life to receive such a letter -- I am quite aware of it, and very grateful for it -- but I can say with truth that the pleasure I should receive from 3 a thousand such letters would not equal that which has thrilled thro my whole frame at some expression of approbation from some of my dearest friends -- such as I have felt when I have seen H's eyes lit up with a brightness which I knew came from the sacred fire that love had kindled in his heart, & not from my tiny -- little ray -- and when you dear Sister, that memorable morning when Harry threw down before us the first bound books before us folded me in your arms, with an expression so full of tender sisterly interest -- I suppose you have forgotten
I am very much afraid Sister Sue is dissatisfied with me -- she has never opened her lips on the subject of my going in Feby -- and I am certain she would if she thought I had done right --
The night-caps are ready -- write to me as often as you can afford to dearest Jeanie & when Harry will let him throw in a few words -- They will be as precious as Sybil leaves -- when are you to see Margt I perfectly long to hear your report -- --
My best love to dear Lucy -- my heart aches to think how long it is before I shall see -- Kate
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers III
Wax blot and tears.
Mrs H D Sedgwick -- /Cedar Street /New York /Mr C Williams
n.d. is written in the upper right corner of page 1.
1845? is written below n.d. in the upper right corner of page 1.
This letter is undated (except for the day of the week), but in correspondence with Frances Sedgwick Watson, dated October 14, 1823, Sedgwick relates several of the same incidents (the letter from Maria Edgeworth, the Pittsfield Fair) as well as the recent departure of family members, as anticipated in this letter. Since the Pittsfield Fair was on Thursday, October 2, 1823, we are dating this letter as Sunday, October 5, 1823.
Sedgwick's "mite" is her first novel, A New-England Tale (1822).
Sedgwick, Lucy Russell, and other women of the congregation introduced a free school for local children in 1823 at what is now All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City.