Katherine Sherwood Bonner McDowell

Katherine Sherwood Bonner McDowell (February 26, 1849 – July 22, 1883) was an American female author and feminist during America's Gilded Age. She is also known by her pen name, Sherwood Bonner.

Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on February 26, 1849, into a wealthy and aristocratic family, Bonner made the decision to leave both her husband and child behind in order to pursue her literary aspirations.

Childhood and early life

Bonner was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on February 26, 1849.[1][2] Her father, an Irish immigrant, married the daughter of a wealthy plantation family during the antebellum period. However, the fortunes of the Bonner family took a turn during the American Civil War when their home was occupied by Union soldiers.[3][4] A childhood of privilege gave way to an early womanhood of decreased possibilities and genteel poverty.[4] Despite being "innately literary" from early childhood, her traditional upbringing and the prevailing societal attitudes offered Bonner little recourse other than marriage.[2]

According to Bonner's scrapbook, her first story, "Laura Capello: A Leaf from a Traveller’s Note Book", was published in the Boston Ploughman when she was 15.[2] However, Anne Razey Gowdy's edited edition of one of Bonner's samplers states that the story wasn't published until 1869, shortly before Bonner turned 20.[5]

She married Edward McDowell on Valentines Day in 1871, at the age of twenty-one.[3][6]

The road to Boston

Following their marriage, Bonner moved with her new husband to Texas and she gave birth to a daughter, Lilian, on December 10.[1][3][6] Edward McDowell, however, was unable to support his wife financially, and Bonner took their daughter back to Holly Springs.[3][7]

In September 1873, Bonner left her daughter in her mother-in-law's care and took a train to Boston, calling upon her acquaintance Nahum Capen, who helped her enroll in a local school.[3][8][9]

Early literary career

Capen employed her as his personal secretary while he worked on History of Democracy.[4] She then began worked as a secretary to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[10] Under Capen and Longfellow's sponsorship, Bonner began publishing stories in Harper’s Young People, The Atlantic Monthly and Youth’s Companion.[10] Longfellow became Bonner's lifelong patron.[1]

Bonner was Longfellow's editorial assistant on Poems of Places.[3] In 1876, Bonner toured England and Europe with novelist Louise Chandler Moulton and wrote travel articles that were published in the Boston Times and the Memphis, Tennessee, Avalanche.[3] After writing articles about her European travels, and with Longfellow's support, Bonner published her only novel, Like unto Like, in 1878.[3][11]

Literary works

Bonner was known for her articles that discussed local stories, in which she is said to skillfully handle the "strange dialect and negro humor".[3][12] Many of her stories focused on her "gran'mammy", a character based on the woman who cared for Bonner as a child.[2] Bonner's stories of Southern life were not tinged with bitterness over the victory of the North in the Civil War, rather she viewed the war as the crisis of the nation as a whole.[13] Her works of note include Dialect Tales, Like unto Like, and Suwanee River Tales.[3] Like unto Like is Bonner's only novel and is considered to be semi-autobiographical.[14][15]

The end of the road

In 1878, a Yellow fever epidemic struck Holly Springs, infecting Bonner's father and brother.[1][16] She returned to her hometown, risking infection, and removed her daughter to safety before nursing her father and brother before they died.[16]

She established residency in Illinois and was able to obtain a divorce from Edward McDowell in 1881.[4] Also in 1881, Bonner was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and was told she had only a year to live.[4] Wanting to leave her mark on the literary world and a financial legacy for her daughter and aunt, Bonner hid her illness from all but her closest of friends and threw herself into her work. The work produced at the later stages of her life has been described as revealing "a greater vision and… technical skill; but the pattern of development is obscured by considerable hackwork." This "hackwork" may by sympathetically attributed to the desperate hurry she was in to meet financial needs and complete her work before she died. Bonner was dictating a novel up until four days before she died in Holly Springs on July 22, 1883.[16]

Legacy

While her writing career was short, Bonner's mark on literature remains.[17][18] Struggling in a patriarchal, misogynistic era, Bonner exemplified the sacrifices women were to make for a professional life, she was described by her daughter in adulthood as a person "whom I wish to resemble in every way."

References
  1. Ference, Audrey (April 11, 2018). "Cedarhurst Is a Southern Gothic Dream in Mississippi for Just $272K". seattlepi.com. Retrieved October 20, 2021.
  2. Bondurant, Alexander Lee (1899). Sherwood Bonner, Her Life and Place in the Literature of the South. p. 45.
  3. McDowell, Katherine Sherwood Bonner (2000). A Sherwood Bonner Sampler, 1869-1884: What a Bright, Educated, Witty, Lively, Snappy Young Woman Can Say on a Variety of Topics. Univ. of Tennessee Press. pp. xiv–xxxv. ISBN 978-1-57233-067-2.
  4. Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967. Univ. Press of Mississippi. 1981. pp. 46–48. ISBN 978-1-61703-418-3.
  5. McDowell, Katherine Sherwood Bonner (2000). A Sherwood Bonner Sampler, 1869-1884: What a Bright, Educated, Witty, Lively, Snappy Young Woman Can Say on a Variety of Topics. Univ. of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-1-57233-067-2.
  6. Bondurant, Alexander Lee (1899). Sherwood Bonner, Her Life and Place in the Literature of the South. pp. 47–48.
  7. Bondurant, Alexander Lee (1899). Sherwood Bonner, Her Life and Place in the Literature of the South. pp. 47–48.
  8. WILLIAMS, SUSAN S. (2008). "Forwarding Literary Interests: James Redpath and the Authorial Careers of Marion Harland, Louisa May Alcott, and Sherwood Bonner". Legacy. 25 (2): 262–274. doi:10.1353/leg.0.0039. JSTOR 25679659. S2CID 144776207.
  9. "Sherwood Bonner achieved early fame". Newspapers.com. June 8, 1986. Retrieved October 25, 2021.
  10. Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967. Univ. Press of Mississippi. 1981. pp. 46–48. ISBN 978-1-61703-418-3.
  11. Ewell, Barbara C.; Menke, Pamela Glenn; Humphrey, Andrea (2002). Southern Local Color: Stories of Region, Race, and Gender. University of Georgia Press. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-8203-2317-6.
  12. Bonner, Sherwood (1990). Dialect Tales and Other Stories. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. xix. ISBN 978-0-8084-0427-9.
  13. McDowell, Katherine Sherwood Bonner (2000). A Sherwood Bonner Sampler, 1869-1884: What a Bright, Educated, Witty, Lively, Snappy Young Woman Can Say on a Variety of Topics. Univ. of Tennessee Press. pp. xlix-2. ISBN 978-1-57233-067-2.
  14. American National Biography, February 1, 2000
  15. Bonner, Sherwood (1990). Frank, William (ed.). Dialect Tales and Other Stories. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. xviii. ISBN 978-0-8084-0427-9.
  16. "Sherwood Bonner". Newspapers.com. August 11, 1883. Retrieved October 25, 2021.
  17. Bonner, Sherwood; McDowell, Katherine Sherwood Bonner (1990). Dialect Tales and Other Stories. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-8084-0427-9.
  18. McDowell, Katherine Sherwood Bonner (2000). A Sherwood Bonner Sampler, 1869-1884: What a Bright, Educated, Witty, Lively, Snappy Young Woman Can Say on a Variety of Topics. Univ. of Tennessee Press. pp. lii. ISBN 978-1-57233-067-2.

Sources
  • McAlexander, Hubert Horton, The Prodigal Daughter: A Biography of Sherwood Bonner (Baton Rouge, * Louisiana State University Press, 1981).
  • Frank, William, L., Sherwood Bonner (Catherine McDowell), (Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1976).
  • Frank, William, L., "Sherwood Bonner" in American National Biography Online database.
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