{"id":1489,"date":"2019-07-30T18:19:13","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T18:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/?post_type=collection&p=1489"},"modified":"2025-05-27T10:03:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T14:03:33","slug":"elizabeth-oakes-smith-collection-1842-2007","status":"publish","type":"collection","link":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/collections\/collections-a-z\/elizabeth-oakes-smith-collection-1842-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Oakes Smith collection, 1842-2007"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Full finding aid (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collection Scope and Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The collection contains original copies of Smith’s first stories “The Western Captive,” “The Christian Sisters,” and “Gems and Reptiles,” published in 1842 and poems published in an 1852 edition of Graham’s Magazine<\/em>. Also in the collection are two photographic reprints of Smith, one as a young woman and also in her later years. Among the material is a piece of correspondence dated 1866, to a Maine attorney, recommending Smith as a lecturer, either for compensation or for no cost as “she could not fail of satisfying everybody with you.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biographical\/Historical Note<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth Oakes Smith was born in North Yarmouth, Maine on August 12, 1806, to Sophia Blanchard and David Prince. Fearing for her future, her mother stopped Smith\u2019s educational pursuits and married her to Seba Smith, a graduate of Bowdoin, twice her age. The two would have six children together, four of whom would live to adulthood. Smith\u2019s connection to the literary world first came through her husband, who owned the first daily paper in Portland, The Portland Courier<\/em>, in which she was often published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publishing several works on her own she wrote under the pseudonym Ernest Heifenstein, but once established as a \u201cfeminist\u201d in 1848, she declared the death of this other name. Smith attended the Woman\u2019s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 and published Woman and Her Needs<\/em> in 1851. Her reputation became widely known because of her abolitionist stance, her views on marriage, and her novel, Newsboy<\/em> (1854) which brought attention to homeless children in New York. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although there is no proof that her marriage was unhappy, much of her feminist success came from her liberal beliefs on marriage. Wanting independence from her husband, Oakes Smith took legal action to have her children\u2019s surnames changed to Oakesmith. Moving to Long Island in 1860, she and her husband experienced financial hardship. Seba Smith died 6 years later. Smith continued to publish in Beadles Monthly<\/em> and Home Journal<\/em>. She died on November 15, 1893 in Hollywood, North Carolina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","collection-category":[],"class_list":["post-1489","collection","type-collection","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection\/1489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/collection"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7462,"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection\/1489\/revisions\/7462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"collection-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection-category?post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}