Today, Salem is home to dozens of women writers; Salem history continues to inspire dozens more.

In 2009, Katherine Howe, a resident of nearby Marblehead, published the highly acclaimed book The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which explores the events of 1692 in a new, thought provoking light. In 2008, Brunonia Barry released the award-winning book The Lace Reader, a gripping novel set in Salem that weaves witchcraft into the story. Salem native Hannah Tinti published the acclaimed book The Good Thief in 2008 and Animal Crackers in 2005. Also in 2005, Megan Marshall won three distinguished prizes for her book about three Salem women, The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism.

Historically, women in Salem have been writing, editing, and publishing for hundreds of years along with more famous men like Nathaniel Hawthorne.


Colonial times
In the 17th century, girls and women who were lucky enough to be taught at home how to read and write wrote mostly personal accounts – letters, diaries, perhaps household or business records. Anne Bradstreet, America’s first female published poet, arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 with the Arbella fleet. The fleet initially landed at Manchester-by-the-Sea and then Salem, where the colonists decided against joining the struggling settlement. Anne lived in Cambridge (then called “Newtowne”) for a time, before returning to the North Shore to live in Ipswich and North Andover. She was a singular exception in the field of women’s professional writing during these early days.  


The eighteenth century
The eighteenth century brought more educational advantages to girls, especially after the American Revolution when the number of female academies grew and women actively participated in the booming “print culture” of magazines and newspapers as both readers and writers. Essayists and poets like Judith Sargent Murray of Gloucester, who had many ties to Salem, published works under assumed names (“Constantia,” “Mr. Gleaner,” “Honora Martesia,” which was the custom for women. 

Elizabeth (”Eliza”) Peabody, the mother of Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody,” published poetry in the Haverhill Federal Gazette in 1799 as “Belinda” before moving to Salem where she taught her daughters to go beyond her own her literary pursuits. Salem’s Elizabeth Elkins Saunders published accounts of poverty and injustice in local newspapers.


Steady progress
In the generations that followed, women writers flourished as they took to the national literary stage on the subjects of women’s rights, abolition, suffrage, temperance, and education. They also wrote novels, children’s stories, and poetry. Elizabeth Peabody served as an editor of the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial. She was also a publisher, and used her resources to further the careers of young writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both Elizabeth and her sister Mary Peabody Mann published their own work as well, particularly in the field of education.

Charlotte Forten, who was educated at the Salem Normal School and taught school in Salem, kept a daily account of her days as a teacher in South Carolina after the Civil War that is today a classic in women’s history.

Susan Burley held salons in her home to encourage literary pursuits in Salem. She attended Margaret Fuller’s “Conversations” in Boston where Fuller encouraged women to think, discuss, and write. Susan Burley also helped further the career of the young writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, and she founded a book club that continues today at the Salem Athenaeum.

Lydia Pinkham wrote books and articles on women’s health care and all of the advertisements for her famous vegetable compound.

Lydia Louisa Ann Very published poetry on nature and political subjects in the Salem Observer and as a book. She was also a journalist, and the mother of the Transcendentalist poet Jones Very.

Kate Tannatt Woods used her writing to support her family when her husband returned from the Civil War with severe wounds. She went on to excel as a contributor to and editor for several magazines, and as the author of more than a dozen books for young people.


The story continues...
The list goes on, into the next century and up to present times. The point being: Salem’s literary heritage is alive and well!