Mary Ellen Chase (1887 - 1973)

Genre: Non-Fiction, Children's Literature, General Fiction

Mary Ellen Chase was born on 24 Feb. 1887 in Blue Hill, a 1909 Univ. of Maine graduate, with a Ph.D. in English from the Univ. of Minnesota, 1922, and honorary degrees from the Univ. of Maine, 1928; Bowdoin, 1933; Colby College, 1937; Northeastern University, 1947; and Smith College, 1949. She spent most of her adult life away from Maine but wrote of it with passion. Chase was a professor at the Univ. of Minnesota from 1922-1926, then at Smith College from 1926 until she retired in 1955. She wrote novels, autobiographies, historical biographies, and books about writing and literature, as well as other non-fiction works. In 1959 she received the Hale Award, given annually to a distinguished writer with a connexion to New England. One of Chase's students at Smith College, Lee Kingman, herself an author and editor, won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue for a piece entitled 'Pamela's Socks and the Roman Emperors,' about her teacher, Mary Ellen Chase. Chase is featured in Down East Today (1938; Virginia Smith Hall), along with Rachel Field, Gladys Hasty Carroll, and Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Chase died in a nursing home in Northampton, Mass, on 28 July 1973. Her papers (with biographical sketch) are at Smith College.

Her works include:

• His Birthday (1915)
• The Girl from the Big Horn Country (1916; children's book)
• Virginia of Elk Creek Valley (1917), children's book
• The Art of Narration (1926), with W. Frances K. Del Plaine
• Mary Christmas (1926), children's book
• Uplands (1927)
• Thomas Hardy from Serial to Novel (1927)
• The Golden Asse and Other Essays (1929)
• Constructive Theme Writing for College Freshmen (1929/1957)
• The Silver Shell (1930), about a fisherman's daughter on a Maine island, for ages 10-14
• A Goodly Heritage (1932/1978), autobiographical account of Maine seacoast life
• Mary Peters (1934), about a Maine seafaring family
• Silas Crockett (1935), 4-generation novel of a family that sailed the clipper ships
• This England (1936), light essays; Chase frequently summered in England
• It's All About Me (1937), children's book
• Dawn in Lyonesse (1938), the retelling of Tristan and Isolde in a modern New England setting
• A Goodly Fellowship (1939), about her experiences as a student and teacher
• Windswept (1941), 3 generations of family life on the Maine coast; Chase's summer home on Petit Manon Point was called Windswept
• The Bible and the Common Reader (1944)
• Jonathan Fisher, Maine Parson, 1768-1847 (1948), really a history of Blue Hill, Maine
• The Plum Tree (1949), a novel
• Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1950), biography
• Recipe for A Magic Childhood (1951, autobiography)
• The White Gate; Adventures in the Imagination of a Child (1954), memoirs of her childhood at Blue Hill
• Life and Language in the Old Testament (1955)
• The Edge of Darkness (1957)
• Sailing the Seven Seas (1958)
• Donald McKay and the Clipper Ships (1959), juvenile biography
• The Lovely Ambition (1960)
• The Fishing Fleets of New England (1961), juvenile
• The Psalms for the Common Reader (1962)
• The Prophets for the Common Reader (1963)
• Victoria: A Pig in a Pram (1963)
• Dolly Moses: The Cat and the Clam Chowder (1964)
• Richard Mansfield: The Prince of Donkeys (1964)
• A Journey to Boston (1965)
• The Story of Lighthouses (1965)
• Values in Literature (1965), with Arno Jewett and William Evans
• A Walk on an Iceberg (1966)

She also wrote the Preface for The Book of Job, from the translation prepared at Cambridge in 1611 for King James I (1946) and for The Book of Ruth, from the translation prepared at Cambridge in 1611 for King James I (1947), and she selected and introduced a volume of Sarah Orne Jewett's stories, The Country of the Pointed Firs, and Other Stories (1968/1981). She also collaborated with the editors of Look magazine in their guidebook New England; A Handbook in Pictures, Maps and Text for the Vacationist, The Traveler... (1947). She selected and edited Readings from the Bible (1952) and edited, with Margaret Eliot Macgregor, The Writing of Informal Essays (1928).

Chase's essay "Memorial Day in Maine" is available on-line. Books about her are A Lantern in the Wind - The Life of Mary Ellen Chase (1887-1973) (by Elienne Squire, Fithian Press, 1995), Feminist Convert: A Portrait of Mary Ellen Chase (Chase, Evelyn Hyman, J. Daniel, 1988), and The White Gate: Adventures in the Imagination of a Child (1954).


Last Update: 08/02/2007

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