Hale's father died in 1863, and her mother died soon after in 1865. In 1868 Hale's Peterkin stories first became available to the public when a few of Lucretia's tales were published in Our Young Folks. This story and subsequent tales about the Peterkin family quickly became popular with the children of the Hale family's friends and relatives. When Harding's young daughter Meggie was ill, Hale told her a story about the misadventures of a family named the Peterkins. Emerson School for Young Ladies in Boston, a like-minded school where she became friends with Susan Inches Lyman. SheĬontinued on to Bronson Alcott's Temple School-a school that stressed the importance of intellectual studies for women-and finally attended the George B. Lucretia first attended Miss Susan Whitney's Dame School at age four and was later educated at Miss Elizabeth Peabody's innovative school, where she befriended Margaret Harding. Lucretia and her brother Edward Everett each produced daily newspapers for the family to enjoy and assisted their father with the editing and writing for the Boston Daily Advertiser. Journalism and writing were encouraged in the Hale family. Of the eleven children born to Nathan and his wife Sarah, seven survived, and the children were commonly divided into two groups: 'We Four,' the eldest, consisted of first-born Sarah, Nathan Jr., Lucretia, and Edward Everett the younger siblings were referred to as 'The Little Ones' and were comprised of Alexander, Charles, and Susan. Her father, Nathan Hale, was the owner and publisher of the Boston Daily Advertiser and nephew and namesake of the Revolutionary War hero. Hale was born on September 2, 1820, in Boston, Massachusetts. Writing during the somber Victorian era, Hale is credited as being one of the first American authors to write silly and inconsequential stories solely for children's entertainment. Nicholas, two children's periodicals of the era, and were collected and published in book form as The Peterkin Papers (1880) and The Last of the Peterkins, with Others of Their Kin (1886). The Peterkin short stories were published individually in Our Young Folks and St.

INTRODUCTIONĪ member of one of Boston's most influential and intellectual families of the nineteenth century, Hale become internationally recognized for her amusing and light-hearted stories of the mishaps and misadventures of the fictional Peterkin family.

The following entry presents an overview of Hale's career through 2003. American novelist and author of short stories for children.

Hale by K. Webster