Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr was a notable author and educator, born to a Methodist minister in Scotland. After her family faced financial difficulties, she began her career as a teacher at the age of sixteen. At nineteen, she married Robert Barr, a wool merchant, and they eventually moved to the United States with their children following his bankruptcy. Barr's personal experiences, including challenges within her marriage and the loss of family members, influenced her literary works, often reflecting themes of parental discord.
She is best known for her historical romances set in Colonial America, where her meticulous research into period details enriched her storytelling. Over her lifetime, Barr wrote an impressive eighty-one novels, drawing on her Scottish roots and experiences in Civil War Texas. Some of her notable works include "Remember the Alamo," "Cluny MacPherson," and "Jan Vedder's Wife." Barr was also a prolific writer for various newspapers, contributing over a thousand articles. Despite criticism about the volume of her work, she gained considerable recognition as a successful female novelist in a male-dominated literary field, leaving a lasting impact on historical fiction.
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Subject Terms
Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
Author
- Born: March 29, 1831
- Birthplace: Yorkshire, England
- Died: March 10, 1919
- Place of death: Richmond Hill, New York
Biography
Amelia Edith Huddleson Barr’s father, William Henry, was a Methodist minister; her mother was Mary Singleton. She attended normal school in Glasgow, Scotland, but after her father lost his modest fortune in a bad business deal, Barr took to teaching at Norfolk at sixteen. She met her husband, Robert Barr, a wool merchant, and married him at nineteen. In 1853, they relocated to the United States with their first three children after her husband went bankrupt. They eventually had eight children together. Her marriage was initially opposed by Robert’s parents, and Barr herself disapproved of her eldest daughters’ marriages. The theme of parental discord thus emerges as a theme in a number of her novels.
Best known for historical romances set in Colonial times, Barr’s works reflect her moral and religious background as well as her support of women’s status in society. Barr contacted Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry W. Beecher, whom she had met in Scotland, and was hired to write for Beecher’s newspapers once she moved to America, writing over one thousand articles for the Union in the 1870’s. Barr worked in Chicago and Memphis, later settling in Galveston, Texas. When her husband succumbed to yellow fever in 1867 and two sons followed him in death, Barr relocated to New Jersey.
In Working Church, she serialized a novel, Eunice Leslie, then wrote her first novel, Romances and Realities: Tales of Truth and Fancy in 1876. She frequently turned to Colonial America as a setting, using real historical events as catalysts. Barr was a meticulous researcher, studying speech patterns, fashion, and domestic life to further authenticate her stories. She wrote Remember the Alamo in 1888, and became extremely popular in her lifetime because of her rich attention to historical detail and the moralistic tone of her novels. Such deft depiction of character and exhaustive research set a high standard for other writers of historical romance.
Barr wrote a staggering eighty-one novels, often drawing upon her experience of life in Scotland and Civil War Texas. Her most prominent novels include Cluny MacPherson and Jan Vedder’s Wife. Well into her eighties, Barr undertook her autobiography, All The Days of My Life. Though some critics felt that producing books at such a rapid rate made for superficial writing, Barr was nonetheless widely admired as one of the few successful female historical fiction novelists of her era.