Edith Ogden Harrison

Edith Ogden Harrison (16 November 1862 – 22 May 1955) was a well-known and prolific author of children's books and fairy tales in the early decades of the twentieth century. She was also the wife of Carter Harrison, Jr., five-term mayor of Chicago.

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. (Their son was the fifth of that name because his father was, formally, Carter Henry Harrison IV. He was known in his political career as "Junior" because his father, Carter Henry Harrison III, had preceded him in office and had been one of Chicago's most famous mayors. Confusion arises when "Junior" is erroneously referred to as "Carter Harrison II.") 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. (All Chicago theaters were closed after the Iroquois Theater fire on 30 December 1903 caused 570 fatalities.) 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.

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