Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (January 29, 1835 – April 9, 1905), known by her pen name Susan Coolidge, was an American children's author, known for her novel What Katy Did (1872).
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Background
Woolsey was born on January 29, 1835, in Cleveland, Ohio, to John Mumford Woolsey and Jane Andrews. She was a member of the wealthy New England Dwight family, and author and poet Gamel Woolsey was her niece. Her family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1852.
Woolsey worked as a nurse during the American Civil War (1861–1865), after which she started to write. She never married, and resided at her family home in Newport, Rhode Island, until her death. She edited The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mrs. Delaney (1879) and The Diary and Letters of Frances Burney (1880).
She is best known for her classic children's novel What Katy Did (1872). The fictional Carr family was modeled after her own, with Katy Carr inspired by Woolsey herself. The brothers and sisters were modeled on her four younger siblings: Jane Andrews Woolsey, born October 25, 1836, who married Reverend Henry Albert Yardley; Elizabeth Dwight Woolsey, born April 24, 1838, who married Daniel Coit Gilman and died in 1910; Theodora Walton Woolsey, born September 7, 1840; and William Walton Woolsey, born July 18, 1842, who married Catherine Buckingham Convers, daughter of Charles Cleveland Convers.
Works
Selected work in periodicals
1871 Girls of the Far North (serial) The Little Corporal, April - August 1871
1874: How St. Valentine Remembered Milly, (story) St. Nicholas, February 1874
1875: The Cradle Tomb at Westminster (poem), Scribner's Monthly, October 1875
1876: Toinette and the Elves (A Christmas Story), (story) St. Nicholas, Jan 1876
1877: The Two Wishes, A Fairy Story, (story) St. Nicholas, March 1877
1879: The Old Stone Basin, (poem) St. Nicholas, January 1879
1880: Kintu (poem) Atlantic Monthly, August 1880
1882: Concord (poem), Atlantic Monthly magazine, July 1882
1887: Lohengrin'(poem), Scribner's Magazine, May 1887
1888: Charlotte Bronte, (poem) St. Nicholas, December 1888
1889: A Little Knight of Labor (serial), Wide Awake, September - November 1889
1890: Hour of Comfort, Poem, The Illustrated Christian Weekly, November 29, 1890
1899: The Better Way (poem), The Indian Helper, November 3, 1899
1903: Dr. Johnson and Hodge His Cat, United Presbyterian Youth Evangelist Paper, July 12, 1903
Articles on Susan Coolidge
1959: Susan Coolidge, the Horn Book Magazine of books and reading for children and young people. 14 pages in June 1959