Pool, Maria Louise (1841–1898)

American author . Born on August 20, 1841, in Rockland, Massachusetts; died on May 21, 1898, in Rockland, Massachusetts; attended public schools; never married; no children.

Selected works:

A Vacation in a Buggy (1887); Tenting at Stony Beach (1888); Dally (1891); Roweny in Boston (1892); Mrs. Keats Bradford (1892); Katharine North (1893); The Two Salomes (1893); Out of Step (1894); Against Human Nature (1895); Mrs. Gerald (1896); In Buncombe County (1896); In a Dike Shanty (1896); In the First Person (1898); Boss and Other Dogs (1898); A Golden Sorrow (1898); A Widower & Some Spinsters (1899); The Melon Farm (1900).

Born in 1841 and raised in the small New England town of Rockland, Massachusetts, Maria Louise Pool attended public school and as a teenager began contributing stories to several popular magazines, including Galaxy. In 1870, after working as a schoolteacher, Pool moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she became a regular contributor to the New York Tribune and the Evening Post, submitting humorous home-spun essays about her native New England and her travels in Florida and the Carolinas. Her first novel, A Vacation in a Buggy (1887), was well received, as were those that followed at a rate of about one a year. While her plots were often strained, Pool's warmly drawn characters and humorous take on life attracted a wide readership. Pool, who never married, died at age 56 at her Massachusetts home, in May 1898. Her last two novels were published posthumously.

sources:

Edgerly, Lois Stiles, ed. Give Her This Day. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 1990.

McHenry, Robert, ed. Famous American Women. NY: Dover, 1983.