Alice Brown (December 5, 1856 – June 21, 1948) was an American novelist, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

, best known as a writer of local color stories. She also contributed a chapter to the collaborative novel, The Whole Family

The Whole Family

The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors is a collaborative novel told in twelve chapters, each by a different author. This unusual project was conceived by novelist William Dean Howells and carried out under the direction of Harper's Bazaar editor Elizabeth Jordan, who would write one of the...

(1908).

She was born in Hampton Falls

Hampton Falls, New Hampshire

Hampton Falls is a New England town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 2,236 at the 2010 census.-History:...

, New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

 and graduated from Robinson Seminary in Exeter

Exeter, New Hampshire

Exeter is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The town's population was 14,306 at the 2010 census. Exeter was the county seat until 1997, when county offices were moved to neighboring Brentwood...

 in 1876. She later worked as a school teacher for five years, but moved to Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 to write full-time in 1884. She first worked at the Christian Register and then, starting in 1885, the Youth's Companion

Youth's Companion

The Youth's Companion , known in later years as simply The Companion—For All the Family, was an American children's magazine that existed for over one hundred years until it finally merged with The American Boy in 1929...

.

She was a prolific author for many years, but her popularity waned after the turn of the 20th century. She produced a book a year until she stopped writing in 1935 http://seacoastnh.com/women/brown.html. She corresponded with Rev. Michael Earls

Michael Earls

Michael Earls, S.J. was a Jesuit priest, as well as a writer, poet, teacher, and administrator. The eldest of ten children, he was born in 1875 to Irish immigrant parents, Martin Earls and Mary Earls, in Southbridge, Massachusetts, a manufacturing town in south, central Massachusetts.He attended...

 of the College of the Holy Cross

College of the Holy Cross

The College of the Holy Cross is an undergraduate Roman Catholic liberal arts college located in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA...

 and with Father J. M. Lelen

J. M. Lelen

Father J. M. Lelen, PhD was an author, translator, poet, and philosopher who corresponded with many notable figures in his lifetime.-Early life:...

 of Falmouth, Kentucky

Falmouth, Kentucky

Falmouth is a small city in Pendleton County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 2,058 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Pendleton County and is the meeting point of the South and Main forks of the Licking River.-Geography:...

, with whom she also exchanged poems. Yale University and Holy Cross now have the only sizable collections of her letters, since she ordered that most of her personal correspondence should be destroyed after her death. Brown died in Boston, Massachusetts in 1948.

Works

• Fools of Nature (1887)
• Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain (1895) (Harper's New Monthly Magazine Oct 1895)
• The Rose of Hope (1896)
• The Day of his Youth (1897)
• Tiverton Tales (1899)
• Margaret Warrener (1902)
• The Story of Thyza (1909)
• John Winterbourne's Family (1910)
• Golden Baby (1910)
  In 2009, The Library of America selected this story for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub
  Peter Straub
  Peter Francis Straub is an American author and poet, most famous for his work in the horror genre. His horror fiction has received numerous literary honors such as the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award, placing him among the most-honored horror authors in...
  
  .
• The One-Footed Fairy (1911)
• The Secret of the Clan (1912)
• Robin Hood's Barn (1913)
• Vanishing Points (1913)
• Children of Earth (1915)
• Bromley Neighborhood (1917)
• The Prisoner (1916)
• The Flying Teuton (1918)
• Homespun and Gold (1920)
• The Wind Between the Worlds (1920)
• One-Act Plays (1921)
• Louise Imogen Guiney
  Louise Imogen Guiney
  Louise Imogen Guiney was an American poet, essayist and editor born in Roxbury, Massachusetts.-Biography:...
  
   — a Study (1921)
• The Old Crow (1922)
• Ellen Prior, verse (1923)
• Meadow-Grass: Tales of New England Life (1923
• The Kingdom in the Sky (1932)

Another book by Alice Brown is The Patient Sufferer, A Story For Youth. It was written for the American Sunday-School Union, and revised by the Committee of Publication. Also noted on title page:
Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, No. 146 Chestnut Street. This book also has a sketch on the preceding page with the title "Where Alice Brown lived".

External links

• Works by Alice Brown at Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
  
  
• http://www.library.unh.edu/special/index.php/alice-brown at University of New Hampshire Library
• Full text of "The Secret of the Clan", Macmillan Company, 1912.