Helen Dore Boylston
Helen Dore Boylston was an American nurse and author known for her influential series of books for young girls featuring a red-haired nurse named Sue Barton. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, she pursued her nursing education at Simmons College and Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing in Boston. During World War I, Boylston served as an anesthetist with the Harvard Medical Unit in France, an experience that significantly shaped her writing. After the war, she continued her nursing career in Europe, working with the Red Cross in various countries including Italy and Germany.
Boylston's literary contributions began with her memoir, "Sister: The War Diary of a Nurse," published in 1927, and she later co-authored "Travels with Zenobia" in 1982, chronicling a road trip with fellow writer Rose Wilder Lane. The Sue Barton series, launched in 1936, depicted the life, studies, and professional journey of a young nurse, resonating with many readers. In addition to her work on Sue Barton, she also created stories about a young actress named Carol Page and published a children's biography of Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, in 1955. Boylston's narrative style, grounded in her personal experiences, offered insights into the lives of women in nursing and the challenges they faced.
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Subject Terms
Helen Dore Boylston
Fiction & Nonfiction Writer
- Born: April 4, 1895
- Birthplace: Portsmouth, New Hampshire
- Died: September 30, 1984
- Place of death: Trumbull, Connecticut
Biography
Helen Dore Boylston, an American nurse who served in France during World War I, drew upon her experience to become the author of a series of popular books for girls that described the adventures of a young red-haired nurse named Sue Barton.
Boylston was born and raised in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She moved to Boston, where she studied nursing at Simmons College and the Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing. She traveled to Europe with the Harvard Medical Unit and worked as an anesthetist in the field hospitals of France. After the end of the war, Boylston remained in Europe and worked as a Red Cross nurse in Italy, Germany, and Albania. These early experiences became the material for her first and last books. She published a memoir of her war service, Sister: The War Diary of a Nurse, in 1927.
It was not until 1982, however, that she published, along with Rose Wilder Lane, Travels with Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford. Lane, the daughter of noted children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder, worked as a reporter in Europe after the war. Boyleston and Lane became good friends. The book is their diary of a trip they took together in 1926.
Boylston returned to the United States in the late 1920’s and first worked as an anesthetist in Boston. She eventually held positions in New York and Connecticut as well. With the help of Jane Ayer Cobb, she began publishing the stories of Sue Barton in 1936. The series followed the travails of a young nurse from New Hampshire as she left home, studied, worked, courted, and married a doctor. The original series, written with Cobb’s assistance, consisted of five books. Boylston wrote two more in the early 1950’s; these told the tales of Sue Barton after her marriage.
Boylston wrote another series of tales about the struggles of a young actress named Carol Page, with the assistance of the actress Eva La Gallienne. She returned to the theme of nursing in 1955 when she wrote a children’s biography of another war nurse, Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross.