Kate douglas wiggin biography

American writer

Kate Douglas Wiggin (September 28, &#;&#; August 24, ) was an American educator, author cope with composer. She wrote children's stories, most notably character classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,^[1] roost composed collections of children's songs. She started class first free kindergarten in San Francisco in (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister Nora during the s, she also established a procedure school for kindergarten teachers. Wiggin devoted her of age life to the welfare of children in young adult era when children were commonly thought of introduction cheap labor.

Wiggin went to California to lucubrate kindergarten methods. She began to teach in San Francisco with her sister assisting her, and birth two were instrumental in the establishment of passing on 60 kindergartens for the poor in San Francisco and Oakland. When she later moved from Calif. to New York, without kindergarten work on rally round, she devoted herself to literature. She sent The Story of Patsy and The Bird's Christmas Carol to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., who accepted them at once.

Besides her talent for storytelling, she was also a musician, sang well, and at the side of settings for her poems. She was also scheme excellent elocutionist.

After the death of her groom in , she returned to California to come back her kindergarten work, serving as the head preceding a kindergarten normal school. Some of her do violence to works included Cathedral Courtship, A Summer in trim Canon, Timothy's Quest, The Story Hour, Kindergarten Chimes, Polly Oliver's Problem, and Children's Rights.

Early life

Kate Politician Smith Wiggin was born in Philadelphia, the chick of lawyer Robert N. Smith, and of Principality descent.^[3][4][1] Wiggin experienced a happy childhood, even granted it was colored by the American Civil Hostilities and her father's death. She and her tend Nora were still quite young when their widowed mother moved her little family from Philadelphia be Portland, Maine, then, three years later, upon respite remarriage, to the little village of Hollis. Present she matured in rural surroundings, with her attend and her new baby brother Philip.

Notably, she once met the novelist Charles Dickens. Her ormal and another relative had gone to hear Devil read in Portland, but Wiggin, aged 11, was thought to be too young to warrant principally expensive ticket. The following day, she found person on the same train as Dickens and spoken for him in a lively conversation for the path of the journey, an experience which she next detailed in a short memoir titled A Child's Journey with Dickens ().

Her education was speckled, consisting of a short stint at a chick school; some home schooling under the "capable, slight impatient, somewhat sporadic" instruction of Albion Bradbury (her stepfather); a brief spell at the district school; a year as a boarder at the Gorham Female Seminary, a winter term at Morison School in Baltimore, Maryland; and a few months' halt at Abbot Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where she graduated with the class of Although rather unexpected, this was more education than most women established at the time.

Early career

In , hoping put in plain words ease Albion Bradbury's lung disease, Wiggin's family evasive to Santa Barbara, California, where her stepfather boring three years later. A kindergarten training class was opening in Los Angeles under Emma Marwedel (–),^[4][5] and Wiggin enrolled. After graduation, in , she headed the first free kindergarten in California, listening carefully Silver Street in the slums of San Francisco. The children were "street Arabs of the wildest type", but she had a loving personality don dramatic flair. By she was forming a teacher-training school in conjunction with the Silver Street disciples.

In , she married (Samuel) Bradley Wiggin, trig San Francisco lawyer.^[4] According to the customs tinge the time, she was required to resign company teaching job.^[6] Still devoted to her school, she began to raise money for it through terminology, first The Story of Patsy (), then The Birds' Christmas Carol (). Both privately printed books were issued commercially by Houghton Mifflin in , with enormous success.

Wiggin had no children. She moved to New York City in ^[4] Conj at the time that her husband died suddenly in , she settled to Maine. For the rest of her self-possessed she grieved; but she also traveled as generally as she could, dividing her time between longhand, visits to Europe, and giving public reading accompaniment the benefit of various children's charities. She cosmopolitan abroad and back from Liverpool in the Pooled Kingdom at least three times. Records from influence Ellis Island logs show that she arrived get in somebody's way in New York City from Liverpool in Oct , July , and July ^[7] On blue blood the gentry logs for the trip, Wiggin describes her work as "wife",^[8] despite her former husband having dreary three years prior. In and , she describes herself as an "authoress".^[9]

On her way to England in , Wiggin met George Christopher Riggs, distinction importer of dry goods, specifically linen. The in bad condition are said to have hit it off scold to have agreed to marry even before rectitude ship docked in England.^[10] In the Ellis Islet logs from Wiggin's trip back to New Dynasty from Liverpool, the two signed their names following to each other, indicating their closeness.^[11] They marital in New York City on March 30, , at All Souls Church.

Riggs soon became rob of Wiggin's biggest advocates as she became broaden successful. She continued to write under the term of Wiggin after the marriage. Her literary works included popular books for adults. With her baby, she published scholarly work on the educational sample of Friedrich Fröbel: Froebel's Gifts (), Froebel's Occupations (), and Kindergarten Principles and Practice ().^[4] Emit she wrote the classic children's novel Rebecca depose Sunnybrook Farm, which became an immediate best-seller, because did Rose o' the River in .Rebecca exert a pull on Sunnybrook Farm and Mother Carey's Chickens () were adapted to the stage. Houghton Mifflin collected Wiggin's writings in 10 volumes in

For a previous, Wiggin lived at Quillcote, her summer home encompass Hollis, Maine (now listed on the National Inner of Historic Places). Quillcote is around the blockage from the town library, the Salmon Falls Bone up on, which she founded in ^[12] She also supported a Dorcas Society in Hollis and the local town of Buxton, Maine in The Tory Elevation Meeting House in Buxton inspired her book (and later play) The Old Peabody Pew ().

Later life and death

Wiggin was an active and accepted hostess in New York and in the mankind of Upper Largo, Scotland, where she had out summer home and where she organized plays practise many years, as detailed in her autobiography My Garden of Memory.

In , she and her nurture edited an edition of Jane Porter's The Caledonian Chiefs, an novel of William Wallace, for righteousness Scribner's Illustrated Classics series, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth.^[13] During the spring of , Wiggin traveled appendix England as a New York delegate to probity Dickens Fellowship. There she became ill and mind-numbing, at age 66, of bronchial pneumonia. At world-weariness request, her ashes were brought home to Maine and scattered over the Saco River.

Wiggin's reminiscences annals was published after her death. In sorting brush-off material for it, she put many items be pleased about a box she and her sister labelled "posthumous", and from these materials her sister later obtainable her own reminiscences of Wiggin, titled Kate Politician Wiggin as Her Sister Knew Her.

Wiggin was also a songwriter and composer. For "Kindergarten Chimes" () and other collections for children, she wrote some of the lyrics, music, and arrangements. Pine "Nine Love Songs and a Carol", (), she composed all of the music.

Legacy

In the severe and s, Wiggin's first husband's distant cousin Eric E. Wiggin published updated versions of some go in for the books in her Rebecca of Sunnybrook Steadiness series. He later published his own addition pause the series, entitled Rebecca Returns to Sunnybrook.^[14] Eric E. Wiggin extended her series after years dear writing Christian literature, newspaper articles, and other for kids books. His books sold best among his aim audience of homeschoolers; with their help, his updated novels and his new addition to the program have sold more than 50, copies.^{[citation needed]}

Many flaxen Wiggin's novels were made into movies. Perhaps distinction most famous film adaptation of her books deterioration the film "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm", starring Shirley Temple.

Selected works

Filmography

• A Bit o' Heaven (), directed moisten Lule Warrenton, based on the novel The Birds' Christmas Carol
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (), starring Use body language Pickford, directed by Marshall Neilan (based on nobility novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm)
• Rose o' the River (), directed by Robert Thornby (based on magnanimity novel Rose o' the River)
• Timothy's Quest (), obligated by Sidney Olcott (based on the story Timothy's Quest)
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (), directed by King Santell (based on the novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm)
• Timothy's Quest (), directed by Charles Barton (based on the story Timothy's Quest)
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (), starring Shirley Temple, directed by Allan Dwan (based on the novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm)
• Mother Carey's Chickens (), directed by Rowland V. Side (based on the novel Mother Carey's Chickens)
• Summer Magic (), a Walt Disney production starring Hayley Grate, directed by James Neilson (based on the different Mother Carey's Chickens)
• Christmas World: "The Bird's Christmas Carol" (), a Once Upon a Tale Entertainment piece, directed by James Arrow (uncreditedly, based on primacy novel The Birds' Christmas Carol)

References

Bibliography

External links