Booth, Mary Louise (1831–1889)
Booth, Mary Louise (1831–1889)
American journalist, translator, and editor. Born in Millville (now Yaphank), a village of Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, on April 19, 1831; died in New York City on March 5, 1889; her father was a school principal at Williamsburg, Long Island; educated at home, the district school, and Long Island academies.
Mary Louise Booth translated some 40 important French works, including the writings of Pascal and Victor Cousin's Secret History of the French Court; or Life and Times ofMadame de Chevreuse . In 1859, Booth published her History of the City of New York. The first of its kind, the work went through four editions. She also translated Edouard Laboulaye's Paris in America (1863), Count Agénor de Gasparin's Uprising of a Great People: The United States in 1861, Augustin Cochin's The Results of Slavery and The Results of Emancipation (both 1863), and Henri Martin's abridgment of his History of France (6 vols., 1880). Mary Louise Booth was the first editor of Harper's Bazaar from its inception until her death in 1889. During the first ten years of her tenure, the magazine grew to a circulation of 80,000.