Mary Mapes Dodge

At 74 years old, Mary Mapes Dodge physical status not available right now. We will update Mary Mapes Dodge's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge (January 26, 1831-1905), a children's author and editor best known for her book Hans Brinker, was born in 1831.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, Dodge ran St. Nicholas for more than 30 years, making it one of the most popular journals for children.

She had the privilege of advising, designing, and obtaining the contributions she desired from only the people she wanted to write. Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Tennyson, Bryant, Stoke, Longfellow, Bret Harte, John Hay, Charles Dudley Warner, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and scores of others were able to convince many of the world's best writers to contribute to her children's newspaper.

Kipling shared a tale of the Indian jungle to her; Dodge begged him to write it down for St. Nicholas.

He never wrote for children, but he might try again.

The result was The Jungle Book. Dodge converted to literature after her husband's death as a way to educate her sons.

She began writing short sketches for children and soon published Irvington Stories, a collection of them (New York, 1864), which was very popular.

She then published Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, in New York, 1865; the French Academy awarded a prize of 1,500 francs to her.

Dodge was one of Hearth and Home's oldest editors, as she worked with Donald G. Mitchell and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and over the years she served as the newspaper's household and children's section.

When St. Nicholas Magazine was founded in 1873, she became its editor.

A Few Friends, and How They Amused Themselves (Philadelphia, 1879), Theophilus and Others (New York, 1876), and Donald and Dorothy (New York, 1883).

"Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question" was the author of "Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question," a Scribner's Monthly article published in 1870.

Dodge appeared in Harper's Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, the Century, and other periodicals.

Early writings

As well as the literary, appeal of life, and instinctive sense of expression, Dodge's first published article, "Shoddy Aristocracy in America," and the tone of its publication were as much the result of her susceptibility to the human as well as her sense of humor and instinctive expression. The article was sent to The Cornhill Magazine, of London, as a magazine that had been entirely removed from the comedy and the actors it featured. She was paid £50 and a warrant from The Cornhill for a sequence of papers by return post. The article was reprinted in whole or in part by several of the country's top newspapers, much to Dodge's surprise.

Harper's Magazine accepted her first short story, "My Mysterious Enemy" as a result of her rapid rise in her new genre, as well as one of her most famous articles in Scribner's Monthly. This piece grew out of a remark made by Dodge and Smith as they were discussing the latest incarcerated of a criminal on the plea of mental insanity.

Dodge came out in 1864, she first book – made up of short stories for children – after its appearance in top magazines of several essays and tales for grown-up readers. (1864). It was a modest muslin-covered duodecimo with three or four illustrations by F. O. C. Darley. The publisher wanted a second series or a sequel due to its success.

In the meantime, Dodge had started to work on a longer story. She had been delighted and intrigued by John Lothrop Motley's recently published histories, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, and the History of the Netherlands, as the rest of the reading world has. She resolved to make the Netherlands the scene of a youth story and give the children so much of the country's history as it should tell itself, naturally. She was actually improving it as a "good-night tale" for her boys, so she kept it up as she went along. She began to tell her children a tale of life in the Netherlands, weaving in interesting details from the country's past, which she had never seen at any time. The matter became more absorbing to her. She lived on the manuscript from morning to night, researching every source of evidence that might make her pages more accurate or more entertaining to her readers. She ransacked libraries for books upon the Netherlands; made every traveler she encountered tell her his tale of the country; and put every chapter of her book to the test of two brilliant Dutchmen living near her. Upon receiving the manuscript, the publisher, who was dissatisfied that no one else would have a second collection of short stories, was tempted to cancel it. However, the author had no one else ready, and he could not afford to forego the success of her previous work, so he produced Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1865). It became a best-selling item in French, German, Dutch, Russian, and Italian. One of the Montyon Prizes worth fifteen hundred francs was given to it by the French Academy.

Personal life

Dodge lived in a large apartment building overlooking Central Park in New York City. In 1888, she bought a cottage, naming "Yarrow" in Onteora Park, Tannersville, New York, along the slope of Onteora Peak in the Catskill Mountains, which she described as "Yarrow." It was a simple little square frame house, and Dodge took great pleasure in adding, year after year, a bed, a bay-window, or an extension before she built, at last, a multi-gabled house to which she returned every season.

In 1881, one of her sons died, and the other, James Mapes Dodge, was a wealthy designer and manufacturer residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mrs. James Mapes Dodge (Josephine Kern), her daughter-in-law, was the sculptor of The Good Fairy Statue in 1916.

Dodge had been suffering from a severe illness for several months, and it was hoped that the normal sojourn in her summer cottage in Onteora would return her to health, but she became weaker until she died on August 21, 1905.

Source

Midcareer volumes

In the year 1874, Dodge published Rhymes and Jingles. From the first issue, its success was almost as great as that of Hans Brinker.

Three years later, in 1877, she published a book of essays and short stories entitled Theophilus and Others. Theophilus and Others was a book of stories and sketches for grown people. Among its contents were a clever satire, "The Insanity of Cain", which at once attracted wide notice, and the mirth-provoking comicality in Irish dialect, "Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question". This skit – which was compared in rank to Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee" – had an enormous popularity in its day, and was later included in many collections of humorous masterpieces. It was written in a single evening, to fill a blank space in a magazine. Charlotte Cushman immediately gave it a place of honor in her public readings as one of her favorite selections, and sending for its author, asked her to write a companion-piece. A long and warm friendship between the two distinguished women dated from this interview.

In 1879, a collection of poems and verses for grown-up readers, entitled Along the Way, was published. With her usual modesty, Dodge would not dignify her volume of verse by the name of "poems", preferring the simple title of " Along the Way". But, as one critic said of it at the time, "It is a happy thing for those of us who do not walk such ways to have her show us what may there be seen." In 1883, Dodge was persuaded to issue a new edition of this work, under the title Poems and Verses. Throughout, it shows sincerity of poetic feeling; a rich imagination; a genuine love of nature; and a happy serenity of heart. "Enfoldings", the sonnet on "The Stars", "Inverted", "The Two Mysteries", and not a few other pieces are poems indeed – poems that the world will not willingly let die. They have found their way already into various Anthologies of Poetry, whose editors – some of them distinguished critics – are quite willing to call them poems, even if their author was not.

In 1894, she brought out two other books: The Land of Pluck, a collection of sketches and stories which takes its name from the opening article about Holland, and When Life is Young, which opens with her well-known poem "The Minuet", and contains many other favorite pieces. Both books won praise from critics, and a very large audience among young readers. During her career as an editor, Dodge published seven books for adults as well as two books for small children, Baby Days and Bay World.

"The Two Mysteries", "Enfoldings", and "The Compact " demonstrated her depth and tenderness of feeling, intellectual poise, spiritual insight, and simplicity of expression.

Source