Sarah C. Woolsey

Poet and children’s author Sarah Chauncey Woolsey grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, the eldest of five children. Woolsey was educated in private schools and moved with her family to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1855. She worked as a nurse during the Civil War. When her father died in 1870, the family relocated to Newport, Rhode Island, where Woolsey’s friend, the poet Helen Hunt Jackson, also lived. Woolsey began writing in earnest while on a vacation with Jackson that year.

Woolsey published her writing under the pseudonym Susan Coolidge. In addition to her poetry, Woolsey published children’s stories, including The New Year’s Bargain (1871) and What Katy Did (1872). Her series of Katy books, which fea­ture a mischievous, strong-willed young heroine and her siblings, loosely modeled after Woolsey’s family and upbringing, brought her lasting popularity in the United States and England; they remain in print to this day. Woolsey also edited the published correspondence of British novelists Fanny Burney and Jane Austen, and translated Théophile Gautier’s My Household of Pets (1882).

She published two collections of poetry, Verses (1880) and A Few More Verses (1889). Her sister gathered Woolsey’s remaining works into a third, posthumous volume, Last Verses (1906).

Woolsey never married, and resided at her family’s home in Newport until her death.