Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

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Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer
File:Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer.jpg

Mary Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer (July 26, 1822, London - January 4, 1904[1]) was an English-American writer, both of original works and translations.

Biography

She was educated by tutors and at a school in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Early travels also helped educate her.[1] She spent the winter of 1842 in Boston as the guest of the family of George Ticknor, and in that environment received much encouragement of her interest in literature.[2] Her father, Admiral Ralph Randolph Wormeley, of the British navy, a native of Virginia (1785-1852), had for some time preceding his death resided in Boston, Massachusetts, and was grandson, on the mother's side, of Sir John Randolph, attorney general for the Colony of Virginia. Her mother, Caroline Preble,[2] was a niece of Commodore Edward Preble, U. S. Navy. The daughter resided several years in Newport, Rhode Island, and in 1856,[2] after gaining a reputation as a writer, married Randolph Brandt Latimer of Baltimore.[3] From 1856 to 1876, she devoted herself to raising a family. In 1876, she began writing again.[1]

Work

She contributed to magazines, and published:[3]

  • Forest Hill: a Tale of Social Life in 1830-1 (3 vols., London, 1846)
  • Amabel, a Family History, a novel[1] (New York, 1853)
  • Our Cousin Veronica (1856)
  • Familiar Talks on Some of Shakespeare's Comedies (Boston, 1887)

A number of her works were volumes dealing popularly with contemporary European history:[1][4]

  • France in the Nineteenth Century (1892) Further books followed this one on Russia, Turkey, England, Europeans in Africa and Spain.
  • Italy in the Nineteenth Century and the Making of Austro-Hungary and Germany (1896)
  • My Scrap Book of the French Revolution (1898)
  • Judea from Cyrus to Titus; 537 B.C. - 70 A.D. (1899)
  • The Last Years of the Nineteenth Century (1900)

She translated:[1][3]

  • Louis Ulbach, Madame Gosselin (New York, 1878)
  • Louis Ulbach, The Steel Hammer (originally Le Marteau d'acier; 1888)
  • Louis Ulbach, For Fifteen Years, a sequel to The Steel Hammer (originally Quinze ans de bagne; 1888)
  • Ernest Renan, A History of the People of Israel (with J. H. Allen; 1888–96)
  • George Sand, Nanon (1890)
  • J. C. L. de Sismondi, The Italian Republics (1901)
  • The Love Letters of Victor Hugo, 1820-22 (1901)
  • Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena with General Baron Gourgaud (1903)

Family

Translator Katharine Prescott Wormeley is her sister, as is Ariana Randolph Wormeley Curtis (b. October 14, 1835) who wrote a comedy entitled The Coming Woman, or the Spirit of '76 (Boston, 1870), which has been acted in public and private both in the United States and in Europe.[3]

References

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External links