ÿPAR@ ` ÇTEXT ` rSouthworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
1819╨1899
novelist
Born in Washington, D.C., on December 26, 1819, Emma Nevitte graduated form a private academy operated by her stepfather in 1835 and taught school until her marriage in January 1840 to Frederick H. Southworth, with whom she settled the next year in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. She taught school in a nearby town for two years. In 1844 she separated from her husband and returned east to Georgetown, D.C. She continued teaching school for about six years and in her spare time took up writing. After several of her short stories had been published in such periodicals as the Baltimore Saturday Visiter and Gamaliel Bailey╒s National Era, her first novel, Retribution, came out in 1849.
Using the signature E. D. E. N. Southworth, she embarked on a full-time writing career during which she published many short stories and more than 60 novels, nearly all of which were sentimental romances or Gothic melodramas of no lasting literary merit. They appeared in serial form before publication as books. The National Era and the Saturday Evening Post published her earlier novels, and from 1857 the New York Ledger built its large circulation to a considerable degree on her writing. Among her more popular books were The Curse of Clifton, 1852, The Discarded Daughter, 1852, Broken Pledges, 1855, The Missing Bride, 1855, The Hidden Hand, her most popular novel, later dramatized, 1859, The Haunted Homestead, 1860, Ishmael, 1863, The Fatal Marriage, 1863, The Bride of Llewellyn, 1864, Changed Brides, 1867, Fair Play, 1868, How He Won Her, 1869, Tried for Her Life, 1869, The Maiden Widow, 1870, Self-Made, 1876, David Lindsay, 1877, A Leap in the Dark, 1881, Mother╒s Secret, 1883, The Gypsy╒s Prophecy, 1886, and An Exile╒s Bride, 1887. She was the most popular of the sentimental novelists of the day, and she surpassed most of her competitors in quality and productivity as well. She is credited with telling poet John Greenleaf Whittier the story of Barbara Frietschie, which Whittier turned into a popular Civil War ballad in 1863. Southworth died in Georgetown, D.C., on June 30, 1899.
