Susan Hale was born December 5, 1833, into a prominent literary family of Boston. She was the youngest of eight children. Her father, Nathan Hale, nephew of the revolutionary war hero of the same name, was editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser. Her mother, Sarah Preston Everett, was a sister of the orator, Edward Everett.
Susan's brother, Edward Everett Hale, was a leading Unitarian minister, a leader in the Social Gospel movement, and author of numerous articles, sermons, pamphlets, and short stories, most prominent of which was The Man Without a Country, written for the Atlantic Monthly in 1863, to inspire greater patriotism during the Civil War. Her sister, Lucretia, with whom she was very close, also wrote numerous books, many of them on religious subjects or on the art of needlework. Lucretia's major reputation, however, rests on a series of whimsical sketches first published in magazines, later collected into two classic books--The Peterkin Papers and The Last of the Peterkins. Susan's brothers, Nathan and Charles (who later became Consul General of the United States in Egypt), followed in the footsteps of their father, and were also editors of the Boston Daily Advertiser.
Susan became a teacher, an art student, a lecturer and public reader, an amateur actress, an avid traveler, and the manager of the family household in Matunuck, Rhode Island, for many years. She traveled extensively in Egypt, the Holy Land, all over Europe, throughout the West Indies, Mexico, and across the American continent. She was a prolific letter writer and, as one of her admirers wrote, her "letters constitute an intimate narrative of the life, activities and thoughts of a cultivated American woman of the highest and best type during an interesting period." She continued her letter writing and traveling until the very end of her life. She died in Matunuck, Rhode Island, in September 1910, at the age of 77.
Open for research.
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Susan Hale Collection, Mss. Gr. 88, University of Rhode Island Library.
The Susan Hale Collection in Special Collections at the University of Rhode Island mostly contains letters written by Miss Hale to Caroline Atkinson, and to her siblings, Lucretia, Edward, Charles, Nathan, and are in either carbon typescript or manuscript. In 1919, Caroline P. Atkinson published The Letters of Susan Hale. The collection given to the University of Rhode Island seems to be letters collected by Miss Atkinson in preparation for her book, but do not seem to be included in that book. The carbon typescripts were probably transcribed by Miss Atkinson and are typed from manuscript copies already in this collection.
The collection is organized into one series. The letters are arranged alphabetically by recipient and chronologically within folders.
The collection was given to Special Collections in January 1990 by Diane McHugh, Librarian of the Robert Beverly Hale Library in Matunuck, Rhode Island.
The outgoing letters in this series include autograph letters written by Susan Hale to Caroline Atkinson, editor of the The Letters of Susan Hale, to the family of Susan Hale, and some other friends. Some of them have been transcribed by typewriter and the carbons are included with the original manuscript copy. One short fragment of Susan Hale's journal and newspaper clippings collected by Caroline Atkinson are included.
The series is arranged alphabetically by the name of the correspondent and chronologically by date within folders. Unidentified letters and fragments have been placed in two folders at the end of the series.