Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye


Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye was an American biographer.

Early years and education

Elizabeth Craig Eggleston was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Minnesota, December 15, 1858. She was a daughter of Edward Eggleston, the novelist. Her mother, Elizabeth, was of English parentage and of a family with talent for graphic art. Seelye early showed the "book hunger" that characterized members of her family. In 1866, the family removed to Evanston, Illinois, where her father had built one of the earliest kindergartens in America where his children might "be trained".
After they moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1870, Seelye attended Packer Collegiate Institute, but with her parents dissatisfied, she and her sister were soon taught at home by private teachers. She also was the only child to attend adult classes in French and German at the Brooklyn Mercantile Library.
Her love of reading was illustrated in her writing. Her story "“The A.O.I.B.R." appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 1889 with an illustration of a child reading. The Rockwell Centre for American Visual Studies cites this as a surprisingly early illustration of a girl reading. The subject of girls reading in the illustration by Rosina Emmet Sherwood is thought rare.

Career

As an adult, she read works of philosophy, natural science and political economy. Her study of the literature of the Middle English period enabled her to supply the editor of the Century Dictionary with 500 new words and definitions. In 1877, she married Elwyn Seelye, and since that time, lived on or near Lake George, New York. She wrote four of the five volumes in the "Famous American Indian Series", Tecumseh ; Pocahontas ; Brant and Red Jacket, and Montezuma. Seelye also published The Story of Columbus, illustrated by her sister, Allegra Eggleston.

Personal life

Seelye was the mother of six children: Allegra, Blanche, Elwyn, Edward, Cynthia and Elizabeth. She died November 11, 1923, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Selected works