Margaret Sidney

Harriett Lothrop was an American author also known by her pseudonym Margaret Sidney (June 22, 1844 – August 2, 1924). In addition to writing popular children's stories, she ran her husband Daniel Lothrop's publishing company after his death. After they bought The Wayside country house, they worked hard to make it a center of literary life. She wrote the popular Five Little Peppers series. Lothrop was also the founder of the Children of the American Revolution.

Early life

Harriett Mulford Stone was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1844.The daughter of New Haven architect Sidney Mason Stone, she was “brought up in an atmosphere of culture and learning enhanced by free access to her father’s large library.” From early girlhood she “delighted in creating imaginary people”. She was educated at seminaries near her home and graduated from Miss Dutton's School at Grove Hall in New Haven in 1862. While a student there “she displayed such mental alertness, combined with retentive memory and a great imaginative and poetic talent that she was marked for future success.”

She traveled extensively in the United States, and began creating literary compositions early in life. According to a Hartford Courant article, "she wrote constantly but destroyed manuscripts".

Career

She published nothing until 1878 when, at the age of 34, she began sending short stories to Wide Awake, a children's magazine in Boston. Two of her stories, "Polly Pepper's Chicken Pie" and "Phronsie Pepper's New Shoes", proved to be very popular with readers. Ella Farman, the editor of the magazine, requested that Stone write more.