Elizabeth Strong Worthington

Elizabeth Strong Worthington (October 5, 1851 – October 2, 1916) was an American writer during the latter part of the 19th century.

Her first books, When Peggy Smiled: A Love Story and The Biddy Club, were published in 1888. They were followed, in 1898, by The Little Brown Dog and How to Cook Husbands, the later of which was discussed anew in a 2019 article. Her final book was The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives, published in 1900.

She sometimes wrote under the pen name Griffith A. Nicholas.

Critical reception

During her lifetime, Worthington’s works received a mixture of popular and critical attention. Newspaper advertisements promoted her writing in striking terms. An advertisement for her book Our Children in Peril in The Independent (1903) praised it as addressing "one of the most momentous problems of modern times is discussed in this book so powerfully that it will startle and arouse the fathers and mothers of this country." Similarly, a New York Times advertisement from the same month marketed it as "one of the most momentous problems in modern life—the unrecognized vicious practices among the pupils of our public schools—is treated in this work so sanely, so fearlessly, that the revelations made will astound the fathers and mothers of the land." These promotional materials emphasized the reformist urgency of Worthington’s work.

However, not all public reactions to Worthington were favorable. In a 1898 article responding to a letter she had written to a newspaper criticizing his comments about women war workers, Ambrose Bierce sarcastically described Worthington as having been "created free and equal and endowed by her creator with an inalienable lack of the sense of humor," while urging her to "take a more cheerful view of things, stop biting her funny thumb at me and send [him] a peace offering."