Mabel Osgood Wright (January 26, 1859 – July 16, 1934) was an American writer and conservationist. She was an early leader in the Audubon movement who wrote extensively about nature and birds.
Early years and education
Mabel Osgood was the daughter of Samuel and Ellen Haswell (Murdock) Osgood. She was born in New York City on January 26, 1859, one of three daughters, and was educated at home and in private schools. Samuel Osgood was a Harvard-educated Unitarian minister and published author, who was associated with writers and businessmen including George Bancroft, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and J. P. Morgan. Osgood frequently accompanied her father to lectures at the New York Historical Society and other cultural events.
Career
On September 25, 1884, she was married to James Osborne Wright, an Englishman; after an extended visit to England, the couple moved to Fairfield, Connecticut.
Although Wright wished to attend medical school at Cornell, she was encouraged by her husband and father to pursue writing instead. Wright's first printed work (apart from a few verses published anonymously in the Evening Post and the New York Times), was the essay "A New England May Day", which appeared in the Evening Post in 1893. This work was collected with other pieces into her first book, The Friendship of Nature, published by Macmillan in 1894. The book was illustrated with photographs taken by Osgood, and was praised by Wendell Holmes.
In 1894 and 1895, Wright studied at the American Museum of Natural History under Joel Asaph Allen and Frank Chapman, which culminated in the publication of her Birdcraft: A Field Book of Two Hundred Song, Game, and Water Birds (1895), one of the most popular bird guides of the early 20th century. A prototype of the modern field guide to birds for a popular audience, Birdcraft featured color reproductions from John James Audubon and other artists to illustrate species commonly encountered at home or in a neighboring park. A later edition credits Louis Agassiz Fuertes as a contributing artist. Frank Chapman described it as "one of the first and most successful bird manuals." Two years later, Wright's Citizen Bird: Scenes from Bird-life in Plain English for Beginners, a collaboration with Elliott Coues, appeared.
