LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
O modern poet among American women stands higher in the estimation of her literary peers, or in the social scale than does the author of “Bedtime Stories,” “Some Women’s Hearts,” and “In the Garden of Dreams.” Mrs. Moulton enjoys the triple distinction of being a writer of the most popular stories for children, of popular novels for grown people, and of some of the best poetry which any woman has contributed to our literature. In herself she presents the conscientious poet who writes for the purpose of instructing and benefiting, and, at the same time, one whose wares are marketable and popular. Not a few critics have placed her sonnets at the head of their kind in America. Her poetry has for its main characteristic a constant but not a rebellious sorrow expressed with such consistent ease and melody that the reader is led on with a most pleasurable sensation from stanza to stanza and arises from the reading of her verses with a mellower and softer sympathy for his fellow-beings.
Louise Chandler was born at Pomfret, Connecticut, April 5, 1835, and her education was received in that vicinity. Her first book entitled “This, That and Other Poems” appeared when she was nineteen years of age. It was a girlish miscellany and sold remarkably well. After its publication, she passed one year in Miss Willard’s Seminary at Troy, New York, and it was during her first vacation from this school that she met and married the well-known Boston journalist, William Moulton. The next year was published “Juno Clifford,” a novel, without her name attached. Her next publication, issued in 1859, was a collection of stories under the title of “My Third Book.” Neither of these made a great success, and she published nothing more until 1873, when her now famous “Bedtime Stories for Children” was issued and attracted much attention. She has written five volumes of bright tales for children. In 1874 appeared “Some Women’s Hearts”and “Miss Eyre from Boston.” After this Mrs. Moulton visited Europe, and out of the memories of her foreign travel, she issued in 1881 a book entitled “Random Rambles,” and six years later came “Ours and Our Neighbors,” a book of essays on social subjects, and the same year she issued two volumes of poems. In 1889 she published simultaneously, in England and America, her most popular work, entitled “In the Garden of Dreams,” which has passed through many editions with increased popularity. Mrs. Moulton has also edited three volumes of the poems of Philip Burke Marseton.
Mrs. Moulton’s residence has been in Boston since 1855, with the exception of sixteen consecutive summers and autumns which she passed in Europe. In London she is especially at home, where she lives surrounded by friends and friendly critics, who value both her winning personality and her literary art. She has been throughout her life a systematic worker, devoting a part of each day to literary labor. Aside from her books, she has done much writing for newspapers and periodicals. From 1870 to 1876 she was the Boston literary correspondent for the New York “Tribune,” and for nearly five years she wrote a weekly letter reviewing new books and literary people for the Boston “Sunday Herald,” the series of these letters closing in December, 1891.
Mrs. Moulton, while not admitting herself to be a hero worshipper, is full of appreciation of the great bygone names of honor, and enjoys with a keen relish the memory of the personal friendship she had with such immortals as Whittier, Longfellow and Lowell, on this side of the Atlantic, and with Swinburne, Tennyson and others, in Europe.
“IF THERE WERE DREAMS TO SELL.”[¹]