Edith Ogden Harrison


Edith Ogden Harrison was a well-known and prolific author of children's books and fairy tales in the early decades of the 20th century. She was also the wife of Carter Harrison, Jr., five-term mayor of Chicago.

Biography

Edith Ogden was born to Robert N. Ogden, Jr. and Sarah L Beattie, and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana; she was a "belle of cultured, aristocratic habits who acquitted herself well in the parlors of the Potter Palmers and Marshall Fields" and other Chicago notables. She married Carter Harrison on December 14, 1887. Their first child died in infancy in 1889; they had two surviving children, Carter Henry Harrison V, born June 28, 1891, and Edith Ogden Harrison II, born January 21, 1896. The couple celebrated the fiftieth wedding anniversary of an apparently happy marriage in 1937.
In the first phase of her literary career, Edith O. Harrison concentrated on children's literature; later she wrote travel books and autobiographical works. Her early book Prince Silverwings was adapted by family acquaintance L. Frank Baum for a dramatization that never made it to the stage. In the process, influences from Harrison's book appear to have found their way into Baum's works.
She did not abandon her theatrical ambitions: over a number of years Harrison and Baum tried to establish a children's theater in Chicago. They were still working on the project as late as 1915, but without success.
Harrison's 1912 novel The Lady of the Snows was made into a film of the same title in 1915.

Works

Written by husband Carter H. Harrison