Throughout history, many important accomplishments by women have been overshadowed by the so-called scandalous things they have reportedly done. Elizabeth Fries Ellet (October 18, 1818 – June 3, 1877) is a perfect example of this. A noted writer and historian of her time, whose wide-ranging work is still consulted today, Ellet has gone down in history, not as a gifted writer, but as one contemporary blog maintains, “a bad woman.” This is despite the fact that all accounts of her “nasty” behavior were recorded by the men directly involved in the scandal.
Ellet’s Background
Born in Sodus, New York to a well-to-do physician’s family, Ellet attended the Aurora Female Seminary where she acquired a strong background in German, French, and Italian. Starting at the age of sixteen, she published her own poetry, literary translations, and criticisms of European writers in the major periodicals of the day, including the Knickerbocker, The Lady’s Book, the New Yorker, Harpers, the Democratic Review, Atlantic Monthly, and many more.
Her first book, Poems, Translated and Original, published in 1835, contained her tragic play, Teresa Contarini, a retelling of the history of Venice, which was performed in New York and other cities.
Following this publication, in 1836, she married William Ellet, a chemist, and they moved to South Carolina where he taught at South Carolina College, and she continued to write and gather acclaim. In 1845, she moved back to New York City and became a major figure in the literary society of the time, which included Edgar Allen Poe, Margaret Fuller, Anne Lynch, Rufus Griswold, Frances Osgood, and others.
The 1845 scandal that has shadowed her accomplishments to this day grew out of a flirtatious relationship between Edgar Allen Poe and Frances Osgood and her attempt to help.
Ellet’s Accomplishments
Despite the hubbub around her, in 1846 Ellet set out to write a history of the women who participated in the American Revolution. Gathering letters, papers, diaries, and holding interviews with surviving relatives, Ellet found so much material, she had to publish two volumes, and later added a third. In these volumes, she profiled the women’s side of the revolution as it contrasted to the much better-preserved accounts of the men’s, emphasizing the importance of the nurturing and caring part that women played, for which existing “history could do not justice.”
These volumes were followed by works on women artists, pioneers of the west, German folktales, and many more. A major work, The Practical Housekeeper, was an encyclopedic volume on domestic economy, which included thousands of recipes for food and medicines.
The following excerpt is taken from the Preface to Women Artists in All Ages and Countries:
“I do not know that any work on Female Artists, either grouping them or giving a general history of their productions, has ever been published, except the little volume issued in Berlin by Ernst Guhl, entitled “Die Frauen in die Kunstgeschichte.” In that work the survey is closed with the eighteenth century, and female poets are included with painters, sculptors, and engravers in the category of artists. Finding Professor Guhl’s sketches of the condition of art in successive ages entirely correct, I have made use of these and the facts he has collected, adding details omitted by him, especially in the personal history of prominent women devoted to the brush and the chisel. Authorities, too numerous to mention, in French, Italian, German, and English, have been carefully consulted; particularly the works of Vasari, Descampes, and Fiorillo. The biographies of Mlles. Bonheur, Fauveau, and Hosmer, are taken, a little condensed, from late numbers of that excellent periodical, The Englishwoman’s Journal. . . .It is manifestly impossible, in a work of this kind, to include even the names of all the women artists who are worthy of remembrance. Among those of the present day are many, who have not yet had sufficient experience to do justice to their own powers, and any criticism of their productions would be premature and unfair.
No attempt has been made in the following pages to give elaborate critiques, or a connected history of art. The aim has been simply to show what woman has done, with the general conditions favourable or unfavourable to her efforts, and to give such impressions of the character of each distinguished artist as may be derived from a faithful record of her personal experiences. More may be learned by a view of the early struggles and trials, the persevering industry, and the well-earned triumphs of the gifted, than by the most erudite or fine-spun disquisition. E. F. Ellet 1859
Her Writings
- Euphemio of Messina (1834) a translation
- Poems, Translated and Original including the play Teresa Conarini (1835)
- The Characters of Schiller (1839)
- Joanna of Sicily (1840)
- Rambles about the Country (1840)
- The Charm (1947)
- The Women of the American Revolution (1848–50) (3 volumes)
- Evenings at Woodlawn (1849)
- Family Pictures from the Bible (1849)
- Domestic History of the American Revolution (1850)
- Watching Spirits (1851)
- Nouvelettes of the Musicians (1851)
- Pioneer Women of the West (1852)
- Summer Rambles in the West (1853),
- The Practical Housekeeper (1857)
- Women Artists in All Ages and Countries (1859)
- The Queens of American Society (1867)
- Court Circles of the Republic (1869)
Learn More
Legacy Profile of Elizabeth Fires Lummis Ellet by Carol Mattingly
The Scandalous Elizabeth F. Ellet
“An Uneasy Marriage of Sentiment and Scholarship: Elizabeth F. Ellet and the Domestic Origins of American Women’s History,” by Casper Scott, Journal of Women’s History Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall 1992).
The delineation of CHARACTER is undoubtedly the most essential requisite to success in a dramatic production. Be the plot ingenious or well-contrived, even to the greatest degree of perfection which human art can reach; be the scenic accompaniments ever so grand or magnificent, without this most essential ingredient the work will surely fail to delight and captivate.
Elizabeth Ellet The Characters of Schiller (1839)