Author Extraordinaire or Women’s Rights Activist

Author Extraordinaire, E.D.E.N. Southworth, was not only the most prolific of authors during the 19th century, but her literary heroines proved their mettle as subtle Women’s Rights Advocates. For over half a century her works appealed to readers not only in the United States, but her novels and articles were published the world over, in several different languages. Most readers consider Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Harriet Beecher Stowe as the most studied authors of the 19th century, but if you asked someone in 1870, who was the most popular author extraordinaire of the day, the answer indubitably would be Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth or simply Eden Southworth.

Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte, was born December 26, 1819, in what is now Washington D.C. Emma’s father had been an officer in the War of 1812 and died of his unhealed wounds, when the young Emma was only five years old. Emma would later relate of her childhood;

“At the age of six, I was a little, thin, dark, wild-eyed elf, shy, awkward and unattractive, and in consequence was very much—let alone. I spent much time in solitude, reverie, or mischief…”

Her widowed mother remarried, and Emma’s new stepfather, a schoolmaster, was apparently brutal and unsympathetic. Upon graduating from his school at age 16, Emma became a teacher in the local public school system. Five years later she married Frederick Southworth, an inventor from New York and they moved to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to raise a family.

Emma, the delicate city girl, endured many hardships in Wisconsin, living part of the time in a log cabin. She gave birth to a son, Richmond, who was a sickly child, as well as a daughter, Charlotte. Then in 1844, after her husband left to seek his fortune in South America, Emma returned to Washington, D.C. Emma lamented her desperate situation;

“I found myself broken in spirit, health, and purse—a widow in fate but not in fact—with my babes looking up to me for a support I could not give them. It was in these darkest days of my woman’s life, that my author’s life commenced.”

Upon returning to Washington, Southworth had resumed teaching in the Washington D.C. public schools. Her annual salary of $250 represented a very meager family income, so galvanized by her distress, Southworth began writing to distract herself from her woes. She turned in a short story at a local book store she frequented, asking that it be submitted somewhere for publication.

“The Irish Refugee” was accepted by the  Baltimore Saturday Visitor and published in 1846. Although it provided no income to its needy author, Southworth’s first story earned attention from other publications, including The National Era, which would then publish her first novel, Retribution, in serial form in 1849. That work appeared in book form later that year. Southworth rapidly became a very popular writer.

Southworth’s experiences as a young girl, wife and mother, her father’s untimely death, her husband abandoning the family, the stepfather’s lack of attention, all this history would resonate for vast numbers of her female contemporaries who yearned for the freedom to lead independent lives. Helen Waite Papashvily notes in her study;

“the authors of the domestic novel shared curiously similar backgrounds. Almost all were women of upper-middle-class origin who began very early in life to write, frequently under pressure of sudden poverty…. Most important for many of these women, somewhere, sometime, someplace in her past some man—a father, brother, a husband, a guardian—had proved unworthy of the trust and confidence she placed in him. This traumatic experience, never resolved, grew into a chronic grievance.”

Most of her novels first appeared serially in Robert Bonner’s popular story newspaper, The New York Ledger, which reached about a million readers during the late 1850s and 1860s. The exclusive contract Southworth signed with Bonner in 1856 and royalties from her published novels earned her about $10,000 a year, making her one of the country’s best-paid writers.

She wrote steadily, five days a week, for years on end. She would write in segments that initially would be serialized in newspapers and magazines but later were often reprinted in books. In fact, Southworth’s publishing history is so complex that it’s hard to tell how many books she wrote altogether, over sixty at least. Author extraordinaire Southworth wrote, The Deserted Wife, The Discarded Daughter, The Missing Bride, and The Broken Engagement. They all had a recurring theme: a poor and innocent woman is wronged, inviting the pity and sympathy of the reader, but she turns out to be plucky enough to prevail in the end. Some of her villains were female, however the majority were men, arrogant and selfish individuals who all eventually got their just desserts. Emma’s heroines often defy Victorian conventions by using wit, adventure, and rebellion to remedy their oppressive situations.

Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth, died June 30, 1899, at her home over looking the Potomac River.

Author Extraordinaire, E.D.E.N. Southworth, was not only the most prolific of authors during the 19th century, but the characters in her works, serve as an example to all women of the pluck, fortitude and unswerving perseverance of a pioneering Women’s Rights Advocate.

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