Anna T. Sadlier

Anna T. Sadlier (1854 – April 16, 1932) was a Canadian writer whose novels were of a Catholic nature, and whose works numbered over forty volumes. She began to write when she was about eighteen. Her published works include a number of translations from the French, Italian, and Spanish.

Early life and education

Anna Teresa (sometimes "Theresa") Sadlier was born in Montreal, Canada, 1854. Her father was James Sadlier and her mother was Mary Anne Sadlier.

Her education was received at various schools in that city, and completed at the Villa Maria, the principal Convent of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal.

Career

Like her mother, she spent about equal portions of her life in New York City and Montreal. She was a frequent contributor in prose and verse to most of the U.S. Catholic periodicals as well as to some English and Canadian ones. She wrote a great many short stories. One of her earliest literary ventures was Seven Years and Mair, a novelette published by the Harpers in their "Half Hour Series". Her principal original published works were Names that Live and Women of Catholicity, two volumes of biography. Sadlier spent a lot of time on these and they possessed a historical point of view. In two of the sketches which were distinctively American, she drew largely from The Jesuit Relations and the Memoirs of Père Olier, and she had the advantage of access to the annals of the Ursulines of Quebec and of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal.

Among her other original works are two stirring historical romances, The Red Inn of St. Lyphar, which finds its plot and its adventures in the days of the French Revolution and the Rising of La Vendee; and The True Story of Master Gerard, in which the background is provided by Colonial New York and the Leisler conspiracy.