Eleanor Stuart Childs Explained

Eleanor Stuart Childs (June 2, 1872 — April 27, 1952), who often used the pen-name Eleanor Stuart, was an American novelist and short story writer, who lived for a time in Zanzibar.

Biography

Eleanor Stuart Patterson was born in East Orange, New Jersey, the daughter of Edward Patterson and Isabel Liddon Coxe Patterson. Her father was a judge, and president of the Bar Association of the City of New York.^{[1] [2]} She attended the Agnes Irwin School in Philadelphia.^[3]

Patterson was writing for magazines by age 16. Her short stories appeared in Harper's Magazine, Scribner's Magazine, and McClure's Magazine.^[4] She also wrote essays, for National Geographic about Zanzibar, where she lived for several years with her husband and young son,^[5] and for the Boston Evening Transcript about Theodore Roosevelt's trip to Africa.^[6]

The New York Times reviewed Stonepastures as "a most masculine book, so grim and hard and adamantine" in its depiction of life in a Pennsylvania mining town.^[7] Another reviewer called Stonepastures a "homegrown novelette, concise, vivid, and vigorous...unusually satisfactory in itself, and rich in its promise for the writer's purpose."^[8]

In 1903, she married an ivory importer,^[9] Harris Robbins Childs.^[10] Their only child, Edward Patterson Childs, was born in Zanzibar in 1904.^[11] She was widowed in 1922,^[12] in the same year her husband's company went bankrupt and was investigated for irregularities.^[13] She died in 1952, aged 79 years.

Selected works

Novels

• Stonepastures (1895)^[14]
• Averages: A Story of New York (1899)^[15]
• The Postscript (1908)^[16]
• The Romance of Ali (1913)^[17]

Notes and References

1. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/01/30/104918970.pdf "Justice Edward Patterson"
2. Clark Bell, "Judge Edward Patterson, AB, LLD" Medico-Legal Journal (1910-1911): 2-3.
3. https://books.google.com/books?id=COsLAAAAIAAJ&q=Africa "Eleanor Stuart Childs"
4. https://books.google.com/books?id=7GdJAQAAMAAJ&dq=Eleanor+Stuart+childs&pg=RA2-PA54 "Writers of the Day"
5. Mrs. Harris R. Childs (Eleanor Stuart), "Zanzibar" National Geographic 23(2)(August 1912): 810-824.
6. Eleanor Stuart, "Our President A-Hunting: How Africa will Lionize Mr. Roosevelt" Boston Evening Transcript (February 20, 1909): 27.
7. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6527594/review_of_eleanor_stuart/ "Written in Dead Earnest"
8. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6527536/review_of_stonepastures_by_eleanor/ "Books of the Hour"
9. Richard Harding Davis, The Congo and Coasts of Africa (Library of Alexandria 1907).
10. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6528500/eleanor_stuart_childs_moves_to_zanzibar/ "American Bride in Zanzibar"
11. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6527421/eleanor_stuart_childs_1908_in/ "Eleanor Stuart"
12. https://books.google.com/books?id=AXs5AQAAMAAJ&dq=Harris+Robbins+childs&pg=PA2003 "Harris Robbins Childs"
13. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6528214/bankruptcy_and_liabilities_of_childs/ "Experts in Hunt for Millions of Failed Exporters"
14. Eleanor Stuart, Stonepastures (D. Appleton 1895).
15. Eleanor Stuart, Averages: A Story of New York (D. Appleton & Co. 1899).
16. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6528105/review_of_eleanor_stuart_the/ "Pleasing Story by Eleanor Stuart"
17. Eleanor Stuart, The Romance of Ali (Harper & Brothers 1913).