Mabel Wagnalls

Mabel Wagnalls (after marriage, Jones; April 20, 1871 – March 22, 1946) was an American pianist and writer. She established the Wagnalls Memorial Library in honor of her parents, Adam and Anna Willis Wagnalls, as a gift to Lithopolis and Bloom Township, Ohio.

Early life and education

Mabel Wagnalls was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 20, 1871. She was the only child of Adam and Anna Willis Wagnalls. She was a granddaughter of Christopher and Elizabeth (Snyder) Wagenhals and of Aaron and Mary (Henry) Willis, and a descendant of William Henry, only brother of Patrick Henry of Virginia. Her father was one of the original founders of Funk & Wagnalls, publishers of the Standard Dictionary.

She was educated by her mother's until 1885, when she was taken to Berlin by her mother to study piano, and was accepted at the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst. She furthered her music studies in Berlin under Franz Kullak and continued her studies in Paris and Vienna.

All through her daughter's childhood, the mother had insisted on the composition of an original essay every day. In Europe, the mother also urged a resumption of daily work with writing and encouraged the growth of imagination and fancy. Plot-sketches for stories were devised and discussed. These were crude things at first, but the mother tried to find something good in each one of them, and she encouraged the fearless unveiling in every ghost-of-an-idea. Gradually, the ideas came faster and stronger, and in time, the first story was written.

Career

She made her debut as piano soloist at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in 1889, and her U.S. début with the Brooklyn Philharmonic orchestra of Theodore Thomas in New York City on January 11, 1891. She also played with Anton Seidl's orchestra in 1892, at the New York State Music Teachers' convention at Binghamton, New York, 1897. After touring the country performing in various concerts, she soon retired from the scene due to her fragile health. Some of her work is preserved in several records of the Welte-Mignon Autograph Piano.