Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge (January 26, 1831 – August 21, 1905) was an American children's author and editor, best known for her novel Hans Brinker. She was the recognized leader in juvenile literature for almost a third of the nineteenth century.
Dodge was associated with St. Nicholas Magazine for more than 30 years. During that time, it became one of the most successful magazines for children during the second half of the nineteenth century, with a circulation of almost 70,000 copies. She had the faculty of suggesting, creating, obtaining the contributions she wanted from just the people she wanted to write.
She was able to persuade many of the great writers of the world to contribute to her children's magazine – Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Bret Harte, John Hay, Charles Dudley Warner, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, and scores of others. One day, Rudyard Kipling told her a story of the Indian jungle; Dodge asked him to write it down for St. Nicholas. He never had written for children, but he would try. The result was The Jungle Book.
After the death of her husband, Dodge turned to literature as a means to earn the money to educate her sons. She began to write short sketches for children, and soon brought out a volume of them, entitled Irvington Stories, (New York, 1864), which was very successful. She next published Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (New York, 1865); translated into Dutch, French, German, Russian and Italian, and was awarded a prize of 1,500 francs by the French Academy. With Donald Grant Mitchell and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dodge was one of the earliest editors of Hearth and Home, and for several years, she conducted the household and children's department of that journal. In 1873, when St. Nicholas Magazine was started, she became its editor. Her other published volumes were A Few Friends, and How They Amused Themselves (Philadelphia, i860), Rhymes and Jingles (New York, 1874), Theophilus and Others (New York, 1876) Along the Way, poems (New York, 1879), and Donald and Dorothy (New York, 1883). She was the author of "Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question," published in Scribner's Monthly in 1870. Dodge contributed to Harper's Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, the Centur, and other periodicals.
History
Mary Elizabeth Mapes was born January 26, 1831, in New York City. Her parents were Prof. James Jay Mapes, the distinguished promoter of scientific farming in the United States; and Sophia Furman (or Ferrman). Her siblings included Charles V. Mapes, Sophia Mapes (Tolles, the artist), and Catherine T. (Bonnell).
The daughters of Professor Mapes never went to school. They gained their education at home under the care of tutors and governesses, being carefully trained, not only in the usual English branches, but in French, drawing, music, and Latin. She early showed talents for drawing, modeling and musical and literary composition.
In 1851, she married William Dodge, a lawyer from New York City. Within the next four years she gave birth to two sons, James and Harrington. In 1857, William faced serious financial difficulties and left his family in 1858. A month after his disappearance, his body was found after he died from an apparent drowning. With her two children, she returned to the family homestead, a large country house near Newark, New Jersey. Here, her life was mainly devoted to her children. As time went on, she found herself obliged to provide the money for their education and it was for this purpose that she turned to writing. A small cottage or farm-house which adjoined the orchard on her father's estate was taken for use as a study, and Dodge and her boys soon transformed it into a cozy "den". In this simply furnished abode, far enough away from the great house to insure quiet, she set to work in earnest. But, one afternoon of every week belonged exclusively to the boys.