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.
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- Authorship
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r1827 --
I have been so much accustomed to sharing my pleasures with you dear my dear brother & Sister that without your participation I feel like a poor Invalid shut up to a tasteless meal -- Like Harry Hopkins pet cat that saved all her game till she had laid it at her master's feet -- It seems to me not lawful to authorship -- There is a spirit of benevolence -- a moral sensibility in the writings of Sismondi that excites a feeling of personal regard -- -- Such a letter to an obscure unknown individual from a man so distinguished & so occupied in the career of letters is a proof of a most kind & generous disposition --
How different from Miss Edgeworth! -- She certainly belongs to the class of egotists -- I wish you could see her letter of Introduction for Capt Hall to Mrs Griffith -- & a subsequent one -- "Capt H. does me the honor & pleasure to permit me to introduce him to you" -- & "Have you seen Capt H?" -- "have you heard him talk? -- have your friends heard him"? -- & then quite a rant about his fine powers -- Miss E must think the Americans just up to the level of Dr Johnson's requisitions for a female travelling companion -- One would think Hall equal to Mad de Stael & Napoleon -- --
I was delighted my dear Harry to get your letter -- If you can write so well, I see no difficulty as to the mere mechanical parts of writing -- but alas! there is no machine to read with! -- I hope you have enjoyed with your own full & generous glow of feeling the news from Greece 1 -- --
Do you know that Bryant has become a partner in the Eve'g-post concern? 2 -- so you see you laid the corner stone of his fortunes -- He appears very happy -- He 2 brought me last Eve'g the 'talisman' 3 a book similar to the souvenir -- the matter was furnished by himself -- Verplanck -- & Sands -- with some slight contributions from other sources -- -- I have read but one piece, but I rather think it is pretty much of a muchness with the rest -- There is not soil enough in Albums & souvenirs to strike deep root in --
Never was such horrible weather as we have had -- I have been almost dead with the blue-devils -- -- Are you not grieved that Scott has sent out such a poor affair as the Chron? 4 -- Will you tell Eliza I rece'd her letter yesy & that I think every number of the hours 5 has been better & better -- 'It can no farther go' for it is perfect -- -- How delightful it must be for you dear Jane to have Caroline & Eliza so near to you -- My best love to Louisa -- your brother & all the children -- Tell little Fan her old friend Honorine Bonijohn does not forget
I have kept this in hope of a private oppy -- The Major is here on his way to Boston -- Do not again send me a pacquet with your superscipn & no letter -- tis too great a disappointt --
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers III
Wax blot and tear; on half of page 2 and the remainder of the letter sheet, Sedgwick copied, in French, the letter she received from Sismondi.
Henry D Sedgwick Esqre/Boston/Favored by Miss Forbes
(Catherine M. Sedgwick) is written in the top right corner of page 1.
Sedgwick may be referring to the Greek War of Independence and the Battle of Navarino that occurred in 1827. See https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Navarino
William Cullen Bryant had recently become the editor of New York City's Evening Post and served in that position for a half-century.
The Talisman for 1828 is attributed to Francis Herbert, a pseudonym for the combined efforts of Bryant, Verplanck, and Sands. See https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-cullen-bryant
Chronicles of the Canongate (1827), by Sir Walter Scott.
The Well-Spent Hour (1827), by Eliza Cabot Follen.