Mary Freeman
| Mary E. Wilkins Freeman | |
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Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
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| Born |
October 31, 1852 Randolph, Massachusetts |
| Died | March 13, 1930 (aged 77) Metuchen, New Jersey |
| Resting place | Hillside Cemetery, Scotch Plains, New Jersey |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | United States |
| Notable works | A New England Nun |
| Spouse | Dr. Charles Manning Freeman (m.1902) |
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Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (October 31, 1852 – March 13, 1930) was a prominent 19th-century American author.
Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852, to Eleanor Lothrop and Warren Edward Wilkins, who originally baptized her "Mary Ella". Freeman's parents were orthodox Congregationalists, bestowing a very strict childhood. Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works.
In 1867, the family moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, where Freeman graduated from the local high school before attending attended Mount Holyoke College (then, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870–71. She later finished her education at Glenwood Seminary in West Brattleboro. When the family's dry goods business in Vermont failed in 1873, the family returned to Randolph, Massachusetts. Freeman's mother died three years later, and she changed her middle name to "Eleanor" in her memory.
Freeman's father died suddenly in 1883, leaving her without any immediate family and an estate worth only $973. She moved in with a friend and began writing as her only source of income.
During a visit to Metuchen, New Jersey in 1892, she met Dr. Charles Manning Freeman, a non-practicing medical doctor seven years younger than she. After years of courtship and delays, the two were married on January 1, 1902. Immediately after, she firmly established her name as "Mary E. Wilkins Freeman", which she asked Harper's to use on all of her work. The couple built a home in Metuchen, where Freeman became a local celebrity for her writing, despite having occasionally published satirical fictional representations of her neighbors. Her husband, who suffered from alcoholism and an addiction to sleeping powders, was committed to the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane in Trenton, and the two legally separated a year later. After his death in 1923, he left the majority of his wealth to his chauffeur and only one dollar to his former wife.
In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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