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'sHamlet fromQueen Gertrude's point of view.
She was born Elizabeth "Lillie" Buffum Chace inValley Falls, Rhode Island, eighth of ten children ofElizabeth Buffum Chace, a social reformer active in the anti-slavery,women's suffrage, and prison reform movements.[1][2] Her father, Samuel Buffington Chace, was the son ofOliver Chace, a textile manufacturer who founded theValley Falls Company, the original antecedent ofBerkshire Hathaway.[3] Her Quaker parents made their house a station on theUnderground Railroad helping runaway slaves escape to Canada.[1] Her brotherArnold became a noted mathematician. During her youth she became lifelong friends with fellow abolitionists and women's rights campaignersFanny Garrison Villard andAnna Dickinson.[3]
She attendeda girls' school in Massachusetts run byDiocletian Lewis in order to study with the abolitionistTheodore Dwight Weld.[3] Afterwards she served as her mother's secretary for some years, and she traveled to Europe in 1872 for a year of further studies.[3][1]
In 1878, she married John C. Wyman of Massachusetts, a former captain in theUnion Army who had served on the staff of GeneralDaniel McCallum. They had one son, Arthur Crawford Wyman (b. 1879).[1]
Drawing in part on knowledge gained from growing up in a textile-manufacturing family, Wyman made a study of the conditions of factory workers.[1] This research provided the background for an 1877 short story in theAtlantic Monthly detailing the experiences of a child who is born in a family of factory workers and ends up in a reform school.[1] "The Child of the State" drew attention to the problems at the real reform school that had served as the model for her story.[1] She went on to publish several studies of factory life, four of which appeared in theAtlantic Monthly, while others came out in theChristian Union and theChautauquan.[1]
In 1886, her collected stories were published in a volume entitledPoverty Grass.[1] In 1913, she publishedAmerican Chivalry, a collection of essays about social reformers likeWendell Phillips,Sojourner Truth, andParker 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 isGertrude of Denmark: An Interpretive Romance (1924), a study of PrinceHamlet's mother that providesQueen Gertrude's perspectives on her own life and the events of the play.[2] 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.[2]
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.[1] They also worked on developing industrial education programs for Black citizens.[1]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
