By the Light of the Soul A Novel

About Author

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was an American author. Freeman was born on October 31, 1852, in Randolph, Massachusetts, to Eleanor Lothrop and Warren Edward Wilkins, who christened her "Mary Ella". Freeman's parents were conservative Congregationalists, and he grew up under severe supervision. Religious limitations play an important role in some of her works. In 1867, the family relocated to Brattleboro, Vermont, where Freeman graduated from the local high school before spending one year at Mount Holyoke College (formerly Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, from 1870 to 1871. She eventually completed her schooling at Glenwood Seminary in West Brattleboro. Freeman's father died unexpectedly in 1883, leaving her with no close family and an estate of barely $973. Wilkins returned to her hometown, Randolph. She moved in with a friend, Mary J. Wales, and started writing as her sole source of income. During a visit to Metuchen, New Jersey in 1892, she met Dr. Charles Manning Freeman, a non-practicing doctor seven years her junior. After years of courtship and delays, the couple married on January 1, 1902. She immediately established her name as "Mary E. Wilkins Freeman," and requested that Harper's use it on all of her work.

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