Highlights: Editor of the 19th century's most successful women's magazine (and the most popular pre-war magazine in the United States), setting standards for style and mannerisms while expanding restrictions on women's role in the "family realm";. Hale is the literary editor of Godey's Lady's Book and promotes Thanksgiving as a national holiday. She also created the children's song "Mary has a little lamb."
Biography of Sarah Josefa Hale
Her original name was Sarah Josefa Beal, and she was born in 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire. Her father Captain Bill had participated in the War of Independence; after the war, he and his wife, Martha Whittlesey, moved to New Hampshire, where they settled on a farm owned by his grandfather. Sarah was born there and was the third child of her parents.
Education:
Sarah's mother was her first teacher, passing on her love for books and her commitment to basic education for women to her daughter to educate their families. When Sarah's brother Horatio was studying Dartmouth College , he used the summer vacation to tutor Sarah at home to learn the same subjects he was studying: Latin , philosophy, geography, literature, etc. Although the university is not open to women, Sarah has obtained the equivalent of a college education.
From 1806 to 1813, she taught in a private school for men and women near her home, and female teachers were rare at that time.
Marriage:
1813, Sarah married a young lawyer, David Hale. He continued her education, tutoring her subjects including French and botany, where they studied and read together at night. He also encouraged her to write for local publications; she later thought his guidance helped her write more clearly. They had four children, and when David Hale died of pneumonia in 1822, Sarah became pregnant with their fifth child. In memory of her husband, she wore black mourning clothes for the rest of her life.
This young widow in her 30s has to raise her with five children and does not have enough financial ability to support herself and her children. She wants to see them educated, so she seeks some self-sufficiency approach. David’s Masonic colleague helped Sarah Hale and her sister-in-law open a little girl’s shop. But they didn't do well in this business and soon went bankrupt.
First publication:
Sarah decided that she would try to make a living in one of the few female professions: writing. She began to contribute her work to magazines and newspapers, some of which were published under the pseudonym "Cordelia". 1823, with the support of the Freemason, she published the poetry collection "The Forgotten Genius" , and achieved certain success. In 1826, she received a $25 bonus in a poem from the Boston Bystan and Ladies album "Christmas of Charity" .
Northwood:
1827, Sarah Josepha Hale published her first novel "Northwood in New England". comments and public acceptance are positive. The novel depicts family life in the early days of the Republic of China and compares life in the north and south. It touched on the issue of slavery, which Hale later called “the stain of our national character” and the growing tension in economic relations between the two regions. This novel supports the idea of liberating enslaved people and sending them back to Africa and settle in Liberia . The description of slavery highlights the harm to the enslaved, but also dehumanizes those who enslave others or belong to countries that allow slavery. "Northwood " is the first American novel written by a woman.
This novel attracted the attention of Pastor John Lawris Black, the Pastor of the Anglican Church.
Women's Magazine Editor:
Pastor Black founded a new Women's Magazine in Boston. There are about 20 American magazines or newspapers targeting women, but none of them have really succeeded. Black hired Sarah Josefa Hale to be the editor of " Ladies' Magazine" . She moved to Boston and took her youngest son, the older child, either sent to a relative's house or to school. The boarding apartment she lives in also lives in Oliver Wendell Sherlock Holmes. She became friends with many literary people in the Boston area, including the Peabody sisters.
The magazine was then billed as "the first female magazine edited by women...whether in the old world or in the new world." It publishes poetry, essays, novels and other literary works.
The first issue of the new journal was published in January 1828. Hale believes that the magazine aims to promote "female progress" (she later disliked using the word "female" in this case). Hale uses her column “Lady’s Mentor” to promote the cause. She also wanted to promote a new American literature , so she did not publish mainly reprints of British writers like many journals at that time, but instead solicited and published works by American writers. She wrote a considerable portion of each issue, about half, including prose and poetry. Contributors include Lydia Maria Child, Lydia Sigourney and Sarah Whitman. In the first issue, Hale even wrote some letters to the magazine, slightly concealing her identity.
Sarah Josepha Hale Aligns with her pro-American and anti-European stance, prefers minimalist American dress styles over gorgeous European fashions and refuses to show the latter in her magazines. When she couldn't win many converts who met her standards, she stopped printing fashion illustrations in magazines.
Separate Domain:
Sarah Joseph Hale's Ideology is part of the so-called "independent Domain", which believes that the public and political Domain are the natural places for men and the family are the natural places for women. Under this idea, Hale used almost every issue of women's magazine to promote the idea of expanding women's education and knowledge as much as possible. But she objected to political participation like voting, believing that women’s influence in the public sphere is achieved through the actions of their husbands, including at polling stations.
Other projects:
Sarah Josepha Hale During her work at Ladies' Magazine —when she discovered a British publication of the same name, she changed it to American Magazine—Sarah Josepha Hale participated in other careers. She helped organize the Women's Club to raise funds to complete the Bunker Hill Monument , and she proudly pointed out that women are able to raise funds that men cannot. She also helped establish the Seafarers Assistance Association, a group designed to help women and children who have lost their husbands and fathers at sea.
She also published a collection of poems and essays. In order to promote the concept of children's music, she published a collection of poems suitable for being sung, including "Mary's Lamb" , which is today called "Mary has a Little Lamb" . This poem (and other poems in that book) was reproduced in many other publications in the following years, usually without the source . "Mary Had a Little Lamb" appears in McGuffey's Reader (unspecified source) , in which many American children have encountered it. Many of her later poems were similarly excerpted without noting the source, including others included in McGuffey's collection. The popularity of her first collection of poems led to another collection of poems in 1841.
Lydia Maria Child has been the editor of children's magazine Juvenile Miscellany since 1826. Child gave up her editorial position in 1834 and gave it to a "friend" who was Sarah Josepha Hale. Until 1835, Hale served as the unnamed editor of the magazine and continued to serve as editor until the following spring of the magazine was discontinued.
Godey's Lady's Book Editor:
1837, American Lady's Magazine could be in financial trouble, Louis A. Godey purchased it , merged it with his own magazine "The Book of Lady" (Lady's Book), and gave Sarah Josepha Hale as literary editor. Hale stayed in Boston until her youngest son graduated from Harvard in 1841. After successfully getting her kids to educate, she moved to Philadelphia where the magazine is located. Hale's rest of his life was related to this magazine, which was renamed Ms. Gordy's book . Godey himself is a talented promoter and advertiser. Hale's editors provide the cause with a sense of politeness and morality.
Sarah Josepha Hale continues to write a lot of articles for the magazine, just like she did when she was an editor before. Her goal remains to improve women's "moral and intellectual excellence". She still mainly includes original material, rather than reprinting from other places (especially Europe) like other magazines at the time. By giving authors a high salary, Hale helped writing become a viable career.
has some changes compared to Hale's previous edits. Godey opposes any article on partisan political issues or sectarian religious thought, although the general religious sensitivity is an important part of the magazine’s image. Godey fired an assistant editor of Godey's Lady's Book for her writing against slavery in another magazine. Godey also insists on including stylish illustrations of lithographic printing (usually hand-colored), which is why the magazine is famous, although Hale objected to include such images. Hale did write about fashion, and in 1852 she introduced the word “underwear” as a euphemism for underwear, writing about what American women should wear. Images featuring Christmas trees help bring this custom to ordinary middle-class American families.
Godey's female writers include Lydia Sigourney, Elizabeth Ellet and Carline Lee Hentz. In addition to many female writers, Goddy also published male writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Nataniel Hawthorne , Hotel 4Washington Irving and Oliver Wendell Holmes. In 1840, Lydia Sigourney went to London to attend the wedding of Queen Victoria . This incident was reported by the Queen's white wedding dress became the standard for weddings in part because of the report of Gody.
Hell later focused on two sections of the magazine, namely "Literary Notice" and "Editor Station", explaining the moral role and influence of women, women's responsibilities and even advantages, and the importance of women's education. She also promotes the expansion of job opportunities for women, including in the medical field – she is a proponent of Elizabeth Blackwell and her medical training and practice. Hale also supports the property rights of married women.
By 1861, the publication had 61,000 subscribers, making it the largest magazine of this kind in the country. The circulation in 1865 was 150,000 copies.
Causes:
- Enslavement : Although Sarah Joseph Hale opposed slavery, she did not support North American anti-slavement activists.In 1852, after Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" became popular, she republished her book " Northwood " into "North-South Life: Showing the True Colors of Both", and accompanied by a new preface to support the alliance. She was skeptical of total liberation because she did not expect whites to treat those who were enslaved before fairly, and published "" in 1853, proposing to repatriate the enslaved people to Africa.
- suffrage : Sarah Josefa Hale does not support women's suffrage because she believes that voting is conducted in the public or male sphere. On the contrary, she agrees with "women's secrets, the influence of silence."
- Women's Education: Her support for women's education has had an impact on the establishment of Vasa College and has been praised for allowing women to join the faculty. Hale is close to Emma Willard and supports Willard's Troy Women's Seminary. She advocates women to receive teacher training in professional schools in higher education (called teacher schools). She supports sports as part of women’s education, refuting the view that women are too delicate and not suitable for sports.
- Professional women : She began to believe and advocate for women's ability to enter the labor market and get paid.
- Children's Education : As a friend of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Hale set up a kindergarten or kindergarten to house her youngest son. She is still interested in kindergarten sports.
- Fundraising Project : She supports the restoration of the Bunker Hill Monument and Mount Vernon through fundraising and organizational work.
- Thanksgiving : Sarah Josepha Hale advocates the establishment of a national Thanksgiving holiday; after her efforts to convince the president of Lincoln to announce such a festival, she continued to promote Thanksgiving as a unique and unified national cultural event by sharing recipes for turkey, cranberries, potatoes, oysters, etc., and even advocates "proper" clothing for a family.
- National Unity : Thanksgiving was one of the ways Sarah Joseph Hale promoted peace and solidarity, and even before the Civil War, she published poems showing the horrific impact of war on children and women, despite the book by Mrs. Goddy banning partisan politics.
- She started dislike the word "female" used by women, "animal term for gender", saying "female, it does! They may be sheep!" She convinced Matthew Vasa and the New York Legislature to change Vasa's name from Vasa Women's College to Vasa College.
- While writing expanding women's rights and moral authority , she also began to write that men are evil, women are kind, born, and a woman's mission is to bring kindness to men.
More publications:
Sarah Josepha Hale continues to publish a large number of works outside of magazines. She published her own poems and edited anthology of poems.
1837 and 1850 she published her own edited collections of poems, including poems by American and British women. The quotation collection of 1850 is 600 pages long.
Some of her books, especially from the 1830s to the 1850s, were published as gift books, which is an increasingly popular holiday custom. She also published recipes and family recommendations.
Her most popular book is Flora's Interpreter, first published in 1832, a gift book featuring floral illustrations and poetry.By 1848, 14 editions were published, and then it was given a new name, and in 1860, three more editions were published.
Sarah Josepha Hale said that the most important book she wrote is a 900-page book, which contains brief biography of more than 1,500 historical women , "Female Records: Sketches of Outstanding Women" . She first published this article in 1853 and revised it several times.
Later years and death:
Sarah's daughter Joseph started running a girls' school in Philadelphia in 1857 until she died in 1863.
In the last few years of her life, Hale had to fight against her allegations of plagiarizing the poem "Mary's Lamb". The last serious charge was in 1879, two years after her death, Sarah Josepha Hale, a letter written just a few days before her death, to her daughter about her authorship, which helped clarify her authorship. Although not all agree, most scholars admit that she is the author of that famous poem.
Sarah Josepha Hale, who retired in December 1877 at the age of 89, published her last post in Godey's Lady's Book to mark her 50th anniversary as editor of the magazine. Thomas Edison (Thomas Edison) also recorded a speech on a phonograph in 1877 using Hale's poem "Mary's Lamb".
She continued to live in Philadelphia and died at her home there less than two years later. She was buried in Mount Laurel Cemetery, Philadelphia.
The magazine continued under new ownership until 1898, but never succeeded as much as the collaboration between Goddy and Hale.
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