Sarah Josepha Hale: the Life and Times of a Nineteenth-Century Career Woman

by Norma R. Fryatt

A biography of Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, an nineteenth-century women's magazine which supported equal rights for women.

152 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're looking for a book about Hale's career as an author and editor, this is the book. Biographical details of her life outside of her career are scarce. The author doesn't provide her birth date nor does she make any mention of her death. With the exception of her son Horace, her children are barely mentioned. The bibliography of further reading at the end of the book doesn't provide any other biographies of Hale to consult. The subtitle should have been "the Career and Times of a Nineteenth-Century Woman."

Having said this, I nevertheless found this an interesting account of the history of Godey's Lady's Book, which Hale edited and wrote much of the material for. Amazingly, she managed to maintain neutrality in her articles during the Civil War, when she was being pressured to take a side. I learned a lot about other magazines contemporary with Godey's Lady's Book, and I discovered a new author, Ann S. Stephens, to explore. I also was intrigued to learn that her son Horace became a leading scholar of Iroquois culture and history. I can certainly recommend this book if you're more interested in her career than in her life.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

To sum up this book in one word: excellent. This details her editorial and philanthropic work, while offering insight into her personal life. Fryatt also touches upon Hale's contemporaries, with historical groundwork in order to mould this biography into a narrative setting. She touches upon the key movements with which Hale was associated, and does a fair amount of justice discussing each, I believe—as much as she should. Another reviewer exclaimed that this reads like a juvenile work, and I agree that the reading level is between juvenile and adult. It's quick, short (139 pages of actual content) and concise, and, again, provides due justice to the major points in her life.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably not the best biography on Sarah Hale. Granted, it's the only one I've read (aside from the children's book "Thank You, Sarah") but it seems like there is serious potential for a better one. Actually it seems as though it may have been intended for children...seeming to fall somewhere between a children's book and an adult book. And I'll admit, I didn't finish this book. After having it for 6 weeks from the library I had to return it and it just hadn't kept me reading.
I had been hoping to gain more information on her fight to make Thanksgiving a nationally recognized holiday but in all that I read there was only one sentence about it. The focus of the book seemed to really be on her work with Godey's Lady's Book, which was understandably a large part of her life. I just would have liked to see more included about the other things she did as the remarkable woman that she was.

[sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I always feel quite weird when I read books about the person I was named after. I believe there are much better books about Sarah Josepha Hale that I have yet to discover. I need to get on that!