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The central metaphor for understanding the life and work of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps may be that she was born twice. The first time was in Boston, Massachusetts, on 31 August 1844. She was baptized Mary Gray and called Lily by her mother, Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps, a writer of popular didactic tales, and her father, Austin Phelps, a professor of sacred rhetoric and homiletics and author of several influential religious books. The second "birth" occurred after the death of her mother in Andover, Massachusetts, eight years later, when Mary Gray took her mother's name as her own. Some accounts say this name change happened immediately after her mother's death. Others suggest that the change occurred at age twelve, when Mary Gray Phelps joined the church. Phelps wrote nothing to explain her motivation for this name change. With only a few exceptions in her forty-seven years as a writer, Phelps's work appeared under the name Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
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Mary Bortnyk Rigsby, Mary Washington College|with the assistance of Heidi L. M. Jacobs Editorial Assistant, University of |Nebraska, Lincolnand Jennifer Putzi Editorial Assistant, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps from
Dictionary of Literary Biography. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.
