Susan Hale
Susan Hale was an influential American writer and educator born in Boston, Massachusetts. Raised in an intellectually stimulating environment by her father, a newspaper publisher, and her mother, an editor, Hale received an exceptional education that sparked her early interest in writing. After the death of her parents, she traveled to Egypt, igniting a lifelong passion for travel that influenced her later works. Hale spent two decades as a private teacher, developing engaging methods to enhance her students' learning experiences. In the 1870s, she shifted her focus to art, studying in Europe and later publishing a book on painting techniques.
Throughout her career, Hale contributed to various publications, including the Boston Transcript and the Boston Globe, and became acquainted with prominent literary figures of her time. In the early 1880s, she collaborated with her brother Edward on a series of juvenile travel novels, establishing herself as a noteworthy author. Hale was also dedicated to promoting women's literary contributions through public readings and her extensive correspondence, which included over two hundred letters that were published posthumously. Her diverse body of work reflects her commitment to education, travel, and the arts.
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Susan Hale
Author
- Born: December 5, 1883
- Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
- Died: September 17, 1910
- Place of death: Matunuck, Rhode Island
Biography
Susan Hale was raised in Boston, Massachusetts, by her father Nathan Hale—who was the nephew of the Revolutionary War figure of the same name and publisher of the Boston Daily Advertiser—and her mother Sarah Everett Hale, a well-educated woman who worked as an editor on the family’s paper. Susan was given an exceptional education, and as a young woman wrote for the Advertiser, publishing book reviews and editing that portion of the paper.
After the death of her parents and the sale of the newspaper, Hale and her older sister Lucretia visited their older brother in Egypt in 1867, where he had become the U.S. Consul. This was the beginning of Hale’s lifelong love of travel, which would shape much of her writing. Upon returning home in 1868, Hale exhibited her independence when she chose to maintain her own apartment for years rather than living with family members.
For a twenty-year period that lasted until the early 1870’s, Hale worked as a private teacher and tutor for students; she used her own boredom with systematic education to make the courses energetic and engaging. Eventually tiring of pedagogy, she spent 1872 and 1873 in Europe studying art. She would later give painting lessons and eventually even publish a book on painting, Self-Instructive Lessons in Painting with Oil and Water-Colors on Silk, Satin, Velvet and Other Fabrics, Including Lustra Paint and the Use of Other Mediums in 1885. Throughout the latter part of the 1870’s, her paintings garnered recognition and were often chosen for exhibitions in Boston and New York.
During this same period, she performed editorial work for a Boston newspaper, the Balloon Post. Her work with this periodical paved the way for her personal acquaintance with such writers and editors as William Dean Howells, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Bret Harte. She would go on to also write for the Boston Transcript and the Boston Globe periodically for the rest of her life. She also wrote freelance travel articles to help pay for trips and travels abroad.
In the early 1880’s, with the help of her brother Edward Hale (a well-known minister, abolitionist, and author), she began publishing a series of juvenile travel novels known as the Flight novels, which included A Family Flight over Egypt and Syria in 1882 and A Family Flight Around Home in 1884. Her brother was credited as coauthor, and they would go on to write a number of books together. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that Hale herself was the primary author of the Flight books.
Other works included Men and Manners of the Eighteenth Century and The Story of Mexico in 1889. Hale also began presenting public readings of literary works, primarily of neglected texts by women. She also performed comic monologues that became popular. Hale was an inveterate letter writer; more than two hundred letters, spanning a sixty-year period, were published posthumously in Letters of Susan Hale; more than ten thousand more exist in the collection of her writings left to Smith College.