Maria Susanna Cummins
Maria Susanna Cummins was an influential American author born on April 9, 1827, in Salem, Massachusetts. The daughter of Judge David Cummins, she was encouraged to pursue an intellectual life, attending Mrs. Charles Sedgwick's Young Ladies School, where she fostered her love for reading and writing. Cummins gained prominence for her novel, *The Lamplighter*, published anonymously in 1854, which became a best-seller, selling twenty thousand copies in just twenty days. The novel, featuring a resilient female protagonist, contributed to the genre of "domestic novels," characterized by feminist themes that resonated with women and young girls of the time. Following her success, Cummins continued to write, producing works such as *Mabel Vaughan*, which challenged traditional gender roles. Despite her fame, she maintained a low profile and never married. Cummins passed away at the age of thirty-nine on October 1, 1866, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most celebrated writers in America during her lifetime. Her works remain significant for their portrayal of women's experiences and aspirations in the 19th century.
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Maria Susanna Cummins
Author
- Born: April 9, 1827
- Birthplace: Salem, Massachusetts
- Died: October 1, 1866
- Place of death: Dorchester, Massachusetts
Biography
Maria Susanna Cummins was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on April 9, 1827, the daughter of Judge David Cummins and Mehitable Cave Cummins. Her father was strong-willed and intelligent, and he encouraged his daughter to read and study. Little is known about her mother, whose influence on Cummins has not been recorded. Cummins attended Mrs. Charles Sedgwick’s Young Ladies School in nearby Lenox, Massachusetts, where she met other young women who had been encouraged to embrace an intellectual life. After completing her formal education, Cummins returned to her family home, where she lived a comfortable and quiet life. Her father was successful enough that Cummins had no need to work or to marry, and she seems to have spent her early twenties reading and writing.
Her first publications were short stories in the Atlantic Monthly. In 1854, when she was twenty-six, she published a novel, The Lamplighter, anonymously. The novel, a sentimental rags-to-riches story of a desperately poor but plucky girl on the streets of Boston who learns to be charitable and even-tempered, and who in the end marries happily but on her own terms, was modeled on another successful book, Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World.The Lamplighter was an immediate best-seller, selling twenty thousand copies in its first twenty days. Soon it became popular in Europe as well and was translated into German, French, Danish, and Italian.
The Lamplighter is perhaps the best known of the novels now called “domestic novels,” and Cummins the best known of the “domestic sentimentalists.” These novels, featuring female main characters and distinctly feminist in tone, appealed to women and young girls who bought and read them in great numbers. They sold so well that author Nathaniel Hawthorne, famously referring to Cummins and her colleagues as a “d—d mob of scribbling women,” felt that his work, though superior, had no chance of success. With the income from The Lamplighter, Cummins moved from her father’s home to a home of her own in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and joined the First Unitarian Church there. According to her friends, she was untouched by her success, and avoided public attention when possible. Unlike her literary heroines, she did not marry.
Three years after The Lamplighter, Cummins published Mabel Vaughan (1857), a story that challenged the conventional notions of women as subservient and useless, and the book sold fairly well. This was followed by two more novels, El Fureidis (1860), and Haunted Hearts (1864), which attracted neither reviewers nor readers. Two years later, she fell ill and died on October 1, 1866, at the age of thirty-nine. During her lifetime, Cummins was one of the most famous writers in America, and her novels were read by thousands of young women who were eager to read stories about women. Although The Lamplighter was sometimes sold as a children’s book, its treatment of love and marriage made it a popular novel for women and girls of all ages.