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.
Online version 1.
Hold this space for succinct statements about editorial principles here and/or link to the website with more detailed editorial descriptions.
- Family Relations (Sedgwick Family)
- Authorship
- Self-reflection
- Publication
- Travel and Touring, US
- Family Finances (Sedgwick Family)
- Economics
- Social Life and Networks
- Leisure Activities
- Health and Illness
- Religion
- Press
- Literature and History
- Natural World
1824--
I sent you a hasty line my dear Harry written in the grey of the Morn'g just as I was going off to Nhampton and had no time to add some notices which I wished to go with the volumes -- -- But in the first place my dear brother I know you are so zealous about my fame that I am afraid you will for the name of it publish a second edition -- Now I have always been sincere in my declaration that I didnot write for fame -- The book 1 has had much more praise and celebrity than I expected -- I have not weakness nor affectation enough to pretend that I have not been gratified with it, but I am not stimulated to incur the expense of a second edition -- If B & W. 2 should think proper to take upon themselves the second edition at any rate you should think proper I should be quite content --
I didnot decide not to d vol -- -- -- At page 40 2d vol -- you inserted a parah beginning "Now that the first fervors" &c -- This the shaker notes object to particularly as unfounded & I beleive they are right, & think you had better subtract it -- --
Should the epithet 'insane' page 44, be changed if the Sisters' letter is published and what will you substitute -- I wrote a parah to rectify the error in the description of the burial ground but am not sure I put it in the book, if I didnot let me know and I will send it --
I want you to curtail Debby's 4 height one inch -- -- And now I beleive that I am through this tiresome subject -- We went to Northampton and Springfield and got home to dine on Saturday -- We paid our devotions 3 to the mountain and of course had time but for a glimpse at our friends -- They were all well and as kind and agreeable as possible -- We met M Appleton at Northn and are in momentary expectation of her arrival here to dine with us today -- She gave me a very pressing invitation from her husband and herself to return with her, and I have thought a little of it, but I have led such a dissipated life this summer that I think I had best go my old track down the North River --
It is more than a week since I have heard from any of you -- I am in debt to all I very well know -- I have felt quite anxious about 'the Bessing' as she was not well when Robert last wrote -- I hope to hear from you all soon -- I hear that your Review is in the last NA 5, but I have not seen it -- Love to all --
rsas ever --
CMS.4
Is not this nice paper? -- a present from Mrs
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers III
Wax blot; the PS is written in the left margin of page 3.
Henry D Sedgwick Esqre/Cedar Street/NewYork --
1824 is written in the upper right corner of page 1.
Sedgwick published her second novel, Redwood, in 1824.
American publishers Elam Bliss and Elihu White.
Likely Somerset House Magazine, published in London.
Debby is a character from Redwood.
North American Review.