Henrietta Christian Wright

Henrietta Christian Wright (1854–1899) was an American children's author who resided in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey. She was born in 1854 in Old Bridge in Middlesex County, New Jersey and died there in 1899 of tuberculosis. See her tombstone here.

Publishing career

She wrote children's books on literature, history and science. One of her children's books, Children's Stories in American Literature: 1660-1860, covered the lives and works of such great authors as Edgar Allan Poe, William Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. First published in 1861, this book was a part of the everyday schooling of young pre-teens. In 1883, the New York publisher White and Stokes published Little Folk in Green written by Wright and illustrated at the age of 16 by Miss Lydia Emmet (1866–1952), who went on to become a noted portrait artist. Wright also produced Children's Stories in English Literature from Taliesin to Shakespeare, in which she introduces traditional songs and literary work by Chaucer, Spenser, Phillip Sidney, and Shakespeare with biographical and historic notes before re-telling their writings in language for children. It was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1889.

Selected works