Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s early letters document the intellectual development of a prolific woman writer from her childhood in the early national period through the 1813 death of her father Theodore Sedgwick, a Federalist member of Congress and Massachusetts supreme court judge. The youngest daughter in a family of seven siblings, Sedgwick practiced epistolary conventions in her early letters while introducing her lifelong theme of balancing personal and family expectations with the obligation to write. As Sedgwick reported in her later autobiography, she felt that she lacked a satisfactory formal education, but “these great deficiencies” were offset by the quality of her homelife. Her adolescent years were marked by her mother’s chronic ill health and death in 1807, her father’s remarriage in 1808, and her engagement with her siblings’ growing families throughout the period. By 1812, as a 22-year old republican woman reflecting on her social position, CMS felt the call of a “life dignified by usefulness” and compared her father’s contributions to her own potential: “You may benefit a Nation my dear Papa, & I may improve the condition of a fellow being” (1 Mar. 1812).
Letters from Sedgwick’s pre-publication adulthood demonstrate her intellectual and religious development as she grappled with events both personal and national. Her siblings became the central focus of her domestic life, and the Sedgwicks’ experiences with “the market of matrimony” (15 Aug. 1813) provide intriguing fodder for epistolary debate. Sedgwick rejected at least two marriage proposals in her twenties, one in 1812 and another in 1819. In the summer of 1821, she traveled to Niagara Falls and Montreal and began keeping a journal. As Sedgwick developed her authorial persona and worked on her first novel, her full-throated dedication to family, female relationships, and personal usefulness emerged as primary concerns. Sedgwick’s letters also become more philosophical, and her lifelong dedication to republican service and intellectual Unitarianism come into focus. Sedgwick explains her sense of vocation to her lifelong friend Eliza Cabot Follen: “my ministry must be one of watchfulness and steady devotion, and all those cares that love teaches, and can pay without being asked” (15 Nov 1822).
With her first novel A New-England Tale (1822), Sedgwick established herself as a professional writer, and she published four additional literary novels and more than 30 stories during this period. As a dedicated family woman, who also chose to be single and an author, she constructed domestic arrangements that complemented her writing career. She lived in the homes of her brothers and sisters-in-law in Stockbridge, Lenox, and New York City, deepening her relationships with her siblings as well as caring for the children and contributing to their education. Redwood, her second novel, received “much more praise and celebrity than [she] expected” (18 Oct. 1824). As her fame grew, she continued to find her spiritual home in Unitarianism, while her range of acquaintances expanded to include artists, politicians, reformers, educators, and intellectuals. Sedgwick began to travel more widely, visiting friends in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia, and making extended trips to Washington DC and the South. As a measure of her celebrity, she was selected for inclusion in the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans (1834), the only woman included other than Martha Washington. The period was also punctuated by “the real and bitter sorrows that cloud our life” (13 Mar. 1830), including the deaths of her sister Eliza, her childhood nurse Elizabeth Freeman, and her brother Harry.
As a member of the American literati, Sedgwick navigated transatlantic fame while experiencing personal loss at home. She pursued new avenues of benevolent activism in her life and writings. Letters from this period will be available soon.
Sedgwick’s engagement with mid-nineteenth-century reform movements informed her writings during this period. Her primary residences continued to be New York City and the Berkshires. She deepened her relationships with her niece Kate Minot and other members of the next generation of Sedgwicks. Letters from this era will be available at a future date.
During the Civil War period, Sedgwick grappled with issues of national importance alongside personal losses at home. She published her last book and final story and, after a medical crisis, resigned as Director of the New York Women’s Prison Association. In her final years, she resided with Kate Minot and her family near Boston. Letters from this era will be available at a future date.
Online version 1.
Hold this space for succinct statements about editorial principles here and/or link to the website with more detailed editorial descriptions.
- Friendship
- Religion
- Unitarianism
- Natural World
- Childhood
- Childcare
- Literature and History
- Romanticism
- Transcendentalism
- Family Residences (Sedgwick Family)
- Self-reflection
- Gender Roles
- Courtship
- Death
- Morality and Ethics
- Social Life and Networks
- Publication
This is meagre intercourse that you and I keep up dearest Eliza -- a letter once in five or six weeks -- hardly a day passes without some occurrence
I lament every day that you and I dearest Eliza are destined to live so much & so far apart -- I am half tempted to wish that I was a man and could go a courting to you, and then I should be horribly afraid you would not have me -- -- However I don’t know but being a man would save me from any such apprehension, the sex are certainly remarkably exempt from prepossession and then I should wish myself back into my petticoats, and count it a privilege that I might love you and think of you as I do now -- --
Your last letter breathed the spirit of this season -- the spirit of resignation and of faith -- I cannot with such dutiful patience give up the beautiful summer -- the fall seems to me good, as it is good to go to the house of mourning -- very salutary but very painful -- I cannot bear to see these beautiful trees stripped of their honors so rudely, and the white frost spreading its icy fingers over the green hills and meadows where the dew drops have glittered in the morning beam -- -- and the “Ice Spirit” casting its dark shadow over our little river and stilling its “heart touching song” 1 -- but it must be and we too must pass to this decay and death -- but the analogy fails today exchanged for the joy of paradise -- -- The arguments for materialism have sometimes urged themselves almost irresistibly upon my beleif -- and I have feared that in my aversion to them there was something of the pride of self consequence -- But I do not think that in relation to ourselves we have any fear of
I had written thus far when I was interrupted and the bright sun and genial air of this most beautiful morning have chased away all dark thoughts -- -- Thank you dearest E for always remembering my sweet little Kitty -- she is a most engaging little chatterbox. I don’t know whether it is that she knows how to strike the keys to my heart, but she rings all the changes on your name and the other day while she was sitting in my lap, she turned round and putting her arms around my neck “I wish Aunt Kitty” she said “you 4 was Eliza Cabot” -- I took it as a monition to be more like Eliza Cabot -- Elizabeth has gone with her boy to NY -- so that I have at present the entire possession of her -- --
Next to hearing Dr C dear E is the pleasure of hearing him through you -- -- It is delightful that he has come
Do you not regret the transfer of the NA? and are you not offended with Mr S 3 has a man a right after having devoted himself to the holy office, and especially after eminent success to withdraw to a secular pursuit -- no “once a bishop, always a bishop” --
What are you all doing in Boston? -- how is Mrs Channing -- is her daughter S going to NY for the Winter? -- how is your sister S? -- Has Mr G gone again to Baltimore? -- What are you going to do this winter -- Let me know dearest E your pursuits -- your pleasures -- your trials -- Let us as far as we can compensate for this far distance between us -- --
Have you seen Bryant's ode -- and is it not most beautiful? -- -- accept dear the true and hearty love of all mine -- and distribute mine to as many of yours as will take it
Miss Kitty has taken the liberty to decorate my letter with her hieroglyphics -- perhaps you can decypher them --
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers I
Wax blot and tear; PS is cross-written in the right margin of page 2.
Miss Eliza L Cabot/No 1 Mount Vernon/Boston
1823 is written in the upper right hand corner of page 1.
A reference to Eliza Cabot Follen's poem, "The Ice Spirit."
The Scottish island of Iona is one of the oldest centers of Christianity in Western Europe. Sedgwick is referring to Samuel Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), in which he observed, "That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona! "
A reference to the North American Review and Jared Sparks, who retired from his Unitarian ministry and became the magazine's editor in 1823.