Elizabeth "Lillie" Buffum Chace Wyman (December 10, 1847 – January 10, 1929) was an American social reformer and an author best known for her short stories and essays about problems like the mistreatment of factory workers. She also wrote poems and an interpretation of Shakespeare's '' Hamlet'' from Queen Gertrude's point of view.

Family and education

She was born Elizabeth "Lillie" Buffum Chace in

Valley Falls, Rhode Island Valley Falls is a village and census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Cumberland, Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 11,547 at the 2010 census. Warren Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway was founded in 18 ...

, eighth of ten children of

Elizabeth Buffum Chace Elizabeth Buffum Chace (December 9, 1806 – December 12, 1899) was an American activist in the anti-slavery, women's rights, and prison reform movements of the mid-to-late 19th century. She was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of ...

, a social reformer active in the anti-slavery, women's suffrage, and prison reform movements. Her father, Samuel Buffington Chace, was the son of

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, a textile manufacturer who founded the Valley Falls Company, the original antecedent of Berkshire Hathaway. Her Quaker parents made their house a station on the Underground Railroad helping runaway slaves escape to Canada. Her brother

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became a noted mathematician. During her youth she became lifelong friends with fellow abolitionists and women's rights campaigners

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and

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. She attended a girls' school in Massachusetts run by

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in order to study with the abolitionist

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. Afterwards she served as her mother's secretary for some years, and she traveled to Europe in 1872 for a year of further studies. In 1878, she married John C. Wyman of Massachusetts, a former captain in the Union Army who had served on the staff of General

Daniel McCallum Daniel Craig McCallum (January 21, 1815 – December 27, 1878) was a Scottish-born American railroad engineer, general manager of the New York and Erie Railroad and Union Brevet Major General of the United States Military Railroads during the Am ...

. They had one son, Arthur Crawford Wyman (b. 1879).

Writing and social activism

Drawing in part on knowledge gained from growing up in a textile-manufacturing family, Wyman made a study of the conditions of factory workers. This research provided the background for an 1877 short story in the ''Atlantic Monthly'' detailing the experiences of a child who is born in a family of factory workers and ends up in a reform school. "The Child of the State" drew attention to the problems at the real reform school that had served as the model for her story. She went on to publish several studies of factory life, four of which appeared in the ''

Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'', while others came out in the '' Christian Union'' and the ''Chautauquan''. In 1886, her collected stories were published in a volume entitled ''Poverty Grass''. In 1913, she published ''American Chivalry'', a collection of essays about social reformers like Wendell Phillips,

Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...

, and Parker Pillsbury, several of which included personal reminiscences. In 1914, she published a two-volume biography of her mother that she had co-authored with her son: ''Elizabeth Buffum Chace: Her Life and Its Environment''. Wyman's most unusual book is ''Gertrude of Denmark: An Interpretive Romance'' (1924), a study of Prince Hamlet's mother that provides Queen Gertrude's perspectives on her own life and the events of the play. Here Wyman "interrogates the nineteenth-century cult of the self-sacrificing mother", critiquing the influence it had on interpretations of the play by both male critics and actresses playing Gertrude. Wyman and her husband spent two winters in southern Georgia, where they were instrumental in establishing a free library for black citizens of that state. They also worked on developing industrial education programs for black citizens.

Books

* ''Poverty Grass'' (1886) * ''American Chivalry'' (1913) * ''Published Interludes and Other Verses'' (1913) * ''Elizabeth Buffum Chace: Her Life and Its Environment'' (1914; with Arthur Crawford Wyman) * ''Gertrude of Denmark: An Interpretive Romance'' (1924)

References

External links

''Poverty Grass''
on Google Books
''Elizabeth Buffum Chace: Her Life and Its Environment''
on Google Books
''American Chivalry''
on Google Books {{DEFAULTSORT:Wyman, Lillie Buffum Chace 1847 births 1929 deaths 19th-century American women writers 20th-century American women writers Writers from Rhode Island American abolitionists American Quakers American social activists Quaker abolitionists