Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
| Elizabeth Stuart Phelps | |
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| Born |
Mary Gray Phelps August 31, 1844 Andover, Massachusetts |
| Died | January 28, 1911 (aged 66) Newton Center, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Lily Phelps, Mary Adams |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Known for | Writer, essayist, activist |
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Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (August 31, 1844 – January 28, 1911) was an early feminist American author and intellectual who challenged traditional Christian beliefs of the afterlife, challenged women's traditional roles in marriage and family, and advocated clothing reform for women.
In 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, she published The Gates Ajar, which depicted the afterlife as a place replete with the comforts of domestic life and where families would be reunited—along with family pets—through eternity.
In her 40s, Phelps broke convention again when she married a man 17 years her junior. Later in life she urged women to burn their corsets. Her later writing focused on feminine ideals and women's financial dependence on men in marriage. She was the first woman to present a lecture series at Boston University. During her lifetime she was the author of 57 volumes of fiction, poetry and essays. In all of these works she challenged the prevailing view that woman's place and fulfilment resided in the home. Instead Phelps' work depicted women as succeeding in nontraditional careers as physicians, ministers, and artists.
Near the end of her life, Phelps became very active in the antivivisection movement. Her novel, Trixy, published in 1904, was constructed around the topic of vivisection and the effect this kind of training had on doctors. The book became a standard polemic against experimentation on animals.
Elizabeth (August 31, 1844 – January 28, 1911) was born in Andover, Massachusetts to American Congregational minister Austin Phelps and Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps (1815-1852). Her baptismal name was Mary Gray Phelps, after a close friend of her mother's. Her mother wrote the Kitty Brown series of books for girls under the pen name H. Trusta. Her brother, Moses Stuart Phelps, was born in 1849. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Moses Stuart, the eminent president of Andover Theological Seminary. Her mother was intermittentantly ill for most of her adult life and died of brain fever shortly after the birth of their third child, Amos, on November 20, 1852, Then eight years old, Mary Gray asked to be renamed in honor of her mother.
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