Mary Louise Booth, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Mary Louise Booth

American editor, translator and writer

Date of Birth: 19-Apr-1831

Place of Birth: Yaphank, New York, United States

Date of Death: 05-Mar-1889

Profession: historian, translator, journalist, linguist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Aries


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About Mary Louise Booth

  • Mary Louise Booth (April 19, 1831 – March 5, 1889) was an American editor, translator and writer.
  • She was the first editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar. At the age of 18, she left the family home for New York City and learned the trade of a vestmaker.
  • She devoted her evenings to study and to writing.
  • She contributed tales and sketches to various newspapers and magazines, but was not paid for them.
  • She began to do reporting and book-reviewing for educational and literary journals, still without any pay in money, but happy at being occasionally paid in books.
  • She said: "It is my college, and I must learn my business before I can demand pay." In 1856, she compiled a marbleworker's manual, such as had been issued in France, but although it was published, she again was given only books for compensation.
  • As time went on, she received more and more literary work to do, and though still obliged at times to walk four miles for lack of horse-car fare, she made steady progress.
  • She widened her circle of those friends who were beginning to appreciate her abilities.
  • In 1859, she agreed to write a history of New York within a year, and succeeded in doing so; but even then, she was unable to support herself wholly, although she had given up vestmaking and was writing 12 hours a day.
  • When she was 30 years old, she accepted the position of amanuensis to Dr.
  • J.
  • Marion Sims, and this was the first work of the kind for which she received steady payment.
  • She was now able to do without her father's assistance, and live on her own resources in New York, though very plainly.In 1861, at the beginning of American Civil War, she procured the advance sheets, in French, of Agénor de Gasparin's "Uprising of a Great People," and hurried to Scribner's with it to ask if they would publish it if she would translate it.
  • She was told that it would be valuable if it could be issued immediately, but that the war would not last more than a month, and then it would not be so interesting.
  • Booth took the book home with her.
  • By working 20 hours a day, she translated the whole book in less than a week, and it was published in a fortnight.
  • The book created a great sensation among Northerners, and both Charles Sumner and President Lincoln wrote her letters of thanks.
  • But though Sumner wrote her that what she had done was "worth a whole phalanx in the cause of human freedom," again she received but little pecuniary compensation.
  • While the war lasted, however, she translated many French books calculated to rouse patriotic feeling, and was, at one time, summoned to Washington to write for the men whose work for their country she considered it a privilege to help, receiving only her board at a hotel.
  • She was able at this time to procure for her father the position of clerk in the New York Custom House, and so relieve him from the very wearing night work he had been doing.At the end of the American Civil War, Booth had proved so well her fitness for the position that the Messrs.
  • Harper offered her the editorship of Harper's Bazaar – headquartered in New York City – from its beginning in 1867 until her death.
  • She was at first diffident as to her powers, but finally accepted the responsibility, and it was principally due to her that the magazine became so popular.
  • While keeping its character of a home paper, it steadily increased in influence and in circulation, and Booth's success was achieved with that of the paper she edited.
  • She is said to have received a larger salary than any woman in America at the time.
  • She died, after a short illness, on March 5, 1889.

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