Mary Mapes Dodge

Mary Elizabeth Mapes was born in New York City in 1831, the daughter of James Jay Mapes, a promoter of scientific farming, and was educated at home. In 1851 she married William Dodge, a lawyer, and they had two sons. After her husband's death in 1858, she began writing to earn money to educate her sons. Her first collection of sketches for children, Irvington Stories (1864), was successful, and the next year she published Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1865), a story of a poor Dutch boy and his sister who hope to win a skating race on the frozen canals of the Netherlands. It was translated into several languages and won a prize from the French Academy. In 1873 Dodge became the first editor of St. Nicholas, a magazine for children, and led it for more than thirty years. She persuaded leading writers such as Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to contribute, and Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book stories first appeared there. She died in the Catskill Mountains in 1905.

Mary Mapes Dodge is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia