Catharine Maria Sedgwick

A Biographical Sketch

On December 28, 1789, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Catharine Sedgwick was born to Pamela Dwight and Theodore Sedgwick. Pamela Dwight was descended from old New England aristocrats, although Theodore Sedgwick was born into relative poverty. He managed to achieve prosperity and political influence as an outspoken Federalist, rising to hold several influential public positions in the early years of the republic: speaker of the House of Representatives, member of Congress, and justice on the State Supreme Court. His devotion to public service and politics set an example for the young author, and Sedgwick’s conduct books and tracts are voicings of her own political beliefs during an era when women’s voices were rarely heard in public forums. Consumed with domestic duties, Catharine’s mother Pamela Dwight Sedgwick suffered from poor physical and mental health throughout her life. Daughter Catharine was convinced that her mother’s medical condition was a result of oppressive domestic responsibilities and lack of attention from her husband who devoted all his energies to the pursuit of his public career. After her mother’s death, and seeing the difficulty her two sisters experienced as married women, Catharine expressed in her twenties the desire to remain single. Thereafter, she spent her life caring for her brothers and her namesake niece Kate, dividing her time between her family home and the homes of her brothers.

While they ranged in topic from Unitarian tract to Indian frontier romance, Sedgwick’s many novels uniformly garnered critical acclaim. Sedgwick shared with her contemporaries Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant a commitment to American subjects and materials. Lamenting the inadequacy of her own formal schooling and wanting desperately to do good, Sedgwick devoted her abilities to writing didactic stories when she wasn’t writing novels; these tales were intended to informally educate people while simultaneously modeling solutions for social ills. Sedgwick demonstrated remarkable industry and flexibility as a writer, writing over 100 tales for diverse annuals and magazines, publishing her letters from abroad, authoring at least one biography and numerous tracts, and writing many stories for children and young adults. Throughout, she upheld her commitment to writing moral and aesthetic literature. She died in 1867 at the age of 77. She was, in her time, considered one of the founders of American literature.

Based on accounts of Sedgwick’s life found in: