Eleanor Stuart Childs
Eleanor Stuart Childs (June 2, 1872 — April 27, 1952), who often used the pen-name Eleanor Stuart, was an American novelist and short story writer, who lived for a time in Zanzibar.
Biography[edit]
Eleanor Stuart Patterson was born in East Orange, New Jersey, the daughter of Edward Patterson and Isabel Liddon Coxe Patterson. Her father was a judge, and president of the Bar Association of the City of New York.[1][2] She attended the Agnes Irwin School in Philadelphia.[3]
Patterson was writing for magazines by age 16. Her short stories appeared in Harper's Magazine, Scribner's Magazine, and McClure's Magazine.[4] She also wrote essays, for National Geographic about Zanzibar, where she lived for several years with her husband and young son,[5] and for the Boston Evening Transcript about Theodore Roosevelt's trip to Africa.[6]
The New York Times reviewed Stonepastures as "a most masculine book, so grim and hard and adamantine" in its depiction of life in a Pennsylvania mining town.[7] Another reviewer called Stonepastures a "homegrown novelette, concise, vivid, and vigorous...unusually satisfactory in itself, and rich in its promise for the writer's purpose."[8]
In 1903, she married an ivory importer,[9] Harris Robbins Childs.[10] Their only child, Edward Patterson Childs, was born in Zanzibar in 1904.[11] She was widowed in 1922,[12] in the same year her husband's company went bankrupt and was investigated for irregularities.[13] She died in 1952, aged 79 years.
Selected works[edit]
- Novels
- Stonepastures (1895)[14]
- Averages: A Story of New York (1899)[15]
- The Postscript (1908)[16]
- The Romance of Ali (1913)[17]
References[edit]
- ^ "Justice Edward Patterson" New York Times (January 30, 1910).
- ^ Clark Bell, "Judge Edward Patterson, AB, LLD" Medico-Legal Journal (1910-1911): 2-3.
- ^ "Eleanor Stuart Childs" in John William Leonard, ed., Woman's Who's Who of America (American Commonwealth Publishing 1914): 176.
- ^ "Writers of the Day" The Writer 21(4)(December 1909): 54.
- ^ Mrs. Harris R. Childs (Eleanor Stuart), "Zanzibar" National Geographic 23(2)(August 1912): 810-824.
- ^ Eleanor Stuart, "Our President A-Hunting: How Africa will Lionize Mr. Roosevelt" Boston Evening Transcript (February 20, 1909): 27.
- ^ "Written in Dead Earnest" New York Times (February 12, 1896): 10. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Books of the Hour" St. Paul Globe (February 23, 1896): 14. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Richard Harding Davis, The Congo and Coasts of Africa (Library of Alexandria 1907). ISBN 9781465534002
- ^ "American Bride in Zanzibar" St. Louis Republic (December 27, 1903): 28. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Eleanor Stuart" Salt Lake City Tribune (July 5, 1908): 22. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Harris Robbins Childs" Textile World 61(1922): 2003.
- ^ "Experts in Hunt for Millions of Failed Exporters" Evening World (May 7, 1922): 3. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Eleanor Stuart, Stonepastures (D. Appleton 1895).
- ^ Eleanor Stuart, Averages: A Story of New York (D. Appleton & Co. 1899).
- ^ "Pleasing Story by Eleanor Stuart" Louisville Courier-Journal (July 18, 1908): 5. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Eleanor Stuart, The Romance of Ali (Harper & Brothers 1913).
