MARY MAPES DODGE OF ST. NICHOLAS

This was grand reading for us-frankly nostaligic-and we hope that many modern girls will find it so, for this author and great editor brought us so many books that are read by all children today. Born in January, 1831, on Greenwich Street in New York, Lizzie as she was called, moved with her family to an experimental farm in New Jersey between the Passaic and Rahway rivers. There her father started the Korking Farmer in 1849 and there she met William Dodge, a young lawyer. His sudden death, leaving her with young children, pushed her into more writing, her first book being Hans Brinker, She then worked for Hearth and Home and later in November 1873, for Scribners, brought out the first issue of that beloved and great magazine St. Nicholas. She discovered many authors and persuaded others to write for her, most famous of whom were Kipling, Bennett of Master Skylark, Mrs. Burnett with her Little Lord Fauntleroy and Sarah Crewe, Louisa M. Alcott, Howard Pyle, Dorothy Canfield loved for Understood Betsy, Jack London, Lucretia Hale, Frank Stockton, Albert Bigelow Paine and many, many others. She started all those marvelous departments, the letters from foreign lands; the Riddle Box; biographies by Noah Brooks; poetry, where she presented Whittier, Bryant, Celia Thaxter, and other great names. The magazine was taken over by the Century Company but it never lost by changing hands. She began the League for Young Contributors which started so many in writing careers. In her old age she moved to Onteora where she wrote Donald and Dorothy and where she died in 1905.