Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte, 1819-1899

Nineteenth century writer and teacher.

From the description of Letters, 1866. (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library). WorldCat record id: 55492330

Novelist, of Georgetown (Washington, D.C.).

From the description of Papers, 1849-1901. (Duke University Library). WorldCat record id: 20188549

American novelist.

From the description of Papers of Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth, 1852-1894. (University of Virginia). WorldCat record id: 32136585

Southworth published stories in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, the National Era, and the New York Ledger. Her novels number about sixty.

From the description of Papers, 1849-1901. (Duke University Library). WorldCat record id: 155180864

American author.

From the description of Letter : Yonkers, N.Y., to [Harry Watkins], 1889 March 21. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 22777852

From the description of Letter : Yonkers, N.Y., to A.M. Irving, 1878 July 2. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 22777888

From the description of Letter : Prospect Cottage [Washington, D.C.], 1854 Jan. 8. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 22777907

Emma D.E.N. Southworth was born and lived in Washington, D.C. until 1876 when she moved to Yonkers, N.Y. She married Frederick H. Southworth in 1840. She began to write and publish short stories in the 1840s and published her first novel in 1849, originally serialized in the National era.

From the description of Letter, Georgetown [D.C.], to Mr. Howard, ca. 1855-1899. (Pennsylvania State University Libraries). WorldCat record id: 35225062

Biographical Note

Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth, born Emma Nevitte on December 26, 1819, in Washington, D.C., was a late nineteenth-century author whose domestic novels reached a wide audience in the United States and Europe. A school teacher before marriage, Southworth turned to writing to support her family after separating from husband, Frederick Southworth, an itinerant inventor, in 1844. Her first novel, Retribution, published in 1849, sold widely, and she is credited with helping introduce the character types of the self-made man and the independent woman to American fiction.

Southworth wrote more than sixty novels, many of them first presented serially in such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post and the New York Ledger . The Hidden Hand, written in 1859, became a successful book in 1888. A common setting in her writings was the South in the post-Civil War era. Friends with Harriet Beecher Stowe, Southworth was also a supporter of women's rights. She lived in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., until the 1870s, then in Yonkers, New York, and again in Georgetown, where she died on June 30, 1899.

From the guide to the Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth Papers, 1870-1918, (bulk 1890-1899), (Manuscript Division Library of Congress)