33 Facts About Catharine Sedgwick

Catharine Maria Sedgwick was an American novelist of domestic fiction.

Catharine Sedgwick became one of the most notable female novelists of her time.

Catharine Sedgwick wrote work in American settings, and combined patriotism with protests against historic Puritan oppressiveness.

Catharine Sedgwick's topics contributed to the creation of a national literature, enhanced by her detailed descriptions of nature.

Catharine Sedgwick created spirited heroines who did not conform to the stereotypical conduct of women at the time.

Catharine Sedgwick's mother was Pamela Dwight of the New England Dwight family, daughter of General Joseph Dwight and granddaughter of Ephraim Williams, founder of Williams College.

Catharine Sedgwick's father was Theodore Sedgwick, a prosperous lawyer and successful politician.

Catharine Sedgwick was later elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and in 1802, was appointed a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Catharine Sedgwick's talents seem to have been appreciated by her brothers, Henry and Theodore, whose encouragement was acknowledged in the preface to a new edition of her works in 1849.

When Catharine Sedgwick was seven or eight, she passed the summer under the care of her cousin Sabrina Parsons in Bennington, Vermont, at the house of the Rev Mr Swift, the husband of Catharine Sedgwick's aunt.

One of her schoolmates, Susan Anne Ridley Catharine Sedgwick, would become her sister-in-law and a published author.

Catharine Sedgwick converted from Calvinism to Unitarianism, which led her to write a pamphlet denouncing religious intolerance.

In 1825, Catharine Sedgwick published The Travellers, a narrative of a journey made by two very young persons, a brother and sister, with their parents, to Niagara Falls and the northern lakes.

Catharine Sedgwick wrote other things afterward, that in the opinion of some of the critics are superior to either Redwood or Hope Leslie.

Catharine Sedgwick gives the Native American population a voice within Hope Leslie through her characterization of various people within the novel.

Similar to the manner in which Catharine Sedgwick represented a progressive attitude toward the supposed duties of women during the time period, Philip Gura highlights her addition of minority groups as significant characters and her commitment to questioning the history of the nation that has been told exclusively by white men.

Catharine Sedgwick complied, and two volumes were published in 1832, with the title of Tales of the Glauber Spa.

Catharine Sedgwick's contribution was a tale of the times of Charlemagne, titled "Le Bossu", in which she skillfully availed herself of the elements of the picturesque to be found in the customs of that warlike age, and the court of that monarch.

Catharine Sedgwick published tales in The Token annual gift book around this time.

In 1839, Catharine Sedgwick went to Europe, and while there, wrote Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home.

Catharine Sedgwick wrote a Life of Lucretia M Davidson, and contributed numerous articles to the Annuals and the Magazines.

Catharine Sedgwick was engaged at one point to Harmanus Bleecker, a friend of her father and law partner of her brother Theodore.

Catharine Sedgwick is buried in the family plot in Stockbridge.

Catharine Sedgwick's family arranged to have Freeman buried in their family plot as well, and had a tombstone inscribed for her.

Catharine Sedgwick is about the medium height, perhaps a little below it.

Catharine Sedgwick's forehead is an unusually fine one nose of a slightly Roman curve; eyes dark and piercing; mouth well-formed and remarkably pleasant in its expression.

Catharine Sedgwick notes both the areas in which the heroine Leslie is ahead of her time and the areas in which she is a product of her time.

Catharine Sedgwick portrays Leslie as living in a hostile world, where, as a woman, she creates a holistic public role that is not separate from the private sphere.

Catharine Sedgwick regularly uses the rhetoric of "sameness" when comparing Leslie and the main male character, Everell.

Catharine Sedgwick uses a cosmopolitan framework to shed light on American character and national identity in the early republic by exploring America's relationship with Britain and France.

Catharine Sedgwick's characters are conceived with distinctness, and are minutely individual and consistent, while her plot always shows a mind fertile in resources and a happy adaptation of means to ends.

Catharine Sedgwick's style is colloquial, picturesque, and marked by a facile grace which is evidently a gift of nature.

Catharine Sedgwick's characters are nicely drawn and delicately contrasted, her delineation of manners decidedly the best that has appeared.