The first woman in the United States to make a profession of literature was born in Medfield, Mass., in 1755, and died in Brookline, Mass., 15th November, 1832. Her father was a well-to-do farmer of considerable education and culture. Hannah was a delicate child, fond of reading and study. In childhood she memorized most of the poetical works of Milton, Pope, Thomson, Young and others. Her studies were varied, including Greek and Latin, in which she was instructed by the divinity students who made their home with her family. In 1772 her father lost his property, and the children were forced to provide for themselves. Hannah supported herself during the Revolutionary War by making lace and by teaching school. After the war she opened a school to prepare young men for college, in which she was very successful. Her principal work, a volume entitled “A View of Religious Opinions,” appeared in 1784. The labor necessary for so great a work resulted in a serious illness that threatened her with mental derangement. That book passed through several editions in the United States and was republished in England. It is a work of great research and erudition. When the fourth edition was published, she changed the title to “A Dictionary of Religions.” It was long a standard volume. Her second work, “A History of New England,” appeared in 1799, and her third, “Evidences of Christianity,” in 1801. Her income from these successful works was meager, as she did not understand the art of making money so well as she knew the art of making books. Her reputation extended to Europe and won her many friends, among whom was Abbé Grégoire, who was then laboring to secure the emancipation of the Jews in France. With him she corresponded, and from him she received valuable aid in preparing her “History of the Jews,” which appeared in 1812. Her next book, “A Controversy with Dr. Morse,” appeared in 1814, and her “Letters on the Gospels,” in 1826. All her books passed through many editions.

Personal

  Mount Auburn wants a century to hallow it, but it is beginning to soften with time a little. Many of us remember it as yet unbroken by the spade, before Miss Hannah Adams went and lay down there under the turf, alone,—“first tenant of Mount Auburn.” The thunder-storms do not frighten the poor little woman now as they used to in those early days when I remember her among the living.

  When the Athenæum was in Tremont Street, occupying the stuccoed building of two stories which stood on part of the land now occupied by the Probate Office, one solitary female ventured to claim the freedom of its alcoves and to endure the raising of the masculine eyebrows, provoked by the unaccustomed sight. And this “woman who dared” was the famous American authoress, Miss Hannah Adams. It was years before any sister authoress came to follow her example; but, nothing daunted, the little lady browsed among the books, content to look as singular and as much out of place as a woman of to-day would look who frequented a fashionable club designed for the exclusive accommodation of males…. I was well acquainted with Miss Hannah Adams, who was as intimate in my father’s family as a person so modest and retiring could be anywhere. She often stayed with us at Quincy, where she was held in awe by the servants, from her habit of talking to herself. This seemed to them a very weird and uncanny proceeding; but our guest had penetrated a world where they could not follow her, and her lips unconsciously uttered the thoughts that it suggested.

  When Hannah Adams’s last book was published she was about seventy years of age. To her small apartment in Boston, friends, young and old, came to read and talk with her. They heard her repeat the poetry learned in youth; for, as she said, she could repeat “for three months together” the verses then learned, though she was “troubled continually by forgetting where she had laid a pencil or a pen.”… Her young friends knew this when they decorated her room with flowers. Her older friends realized this when they made arrangements for her to exchange her small city room, in the last months of her life, for a home in the old Croft house at Brookline. Her love for the beautiful around her made her say almost at the close of life, “How can anybody be impatient to quit such a beautiful world?” Such testimony from one who had felt the trials and vicissitudes of a long life in a peculiarly personal manner is a precious inheritance for American women.

General

  The author of this work [“Dictionary of Religions”] is in such full possession of publick regard, from the benefit conferred by her writings, and the merits of her several productions are so generally known, that we do not deem it necessary to enter into an elaborate investigation of the manner in which she has executed this new edition of a very useful book. All her works have been the fruit of great labor and extensive research. It could not be otherwise, where so many facts were to be sought among the scattered and voluminous documents, which she was obliged to examine, and where many of these facts were to be ascertained from the variant testimony, which she was compelled to adjudge or to reconcile. It was by her industry, that the history of New England was first embodied.

  Her principal work was a “View of Religions,” in which she gave a comprehensive survey of the various religions of the world. The work was well received, and had an extensive circulation, but is now little known. She wrote also a “History of New England,” a “History of the Jews,” and “Evidences of Christianity.” She was a woman of varied learning and indomitable perseverance.

  Hannah Adams, who wrote as many religious books as if she was an orthodox Congregational minister of the day, prepared a “History of New England,” which, in its way, though not an original authority, was as useful as Dr. Holmes’ more ambitious work; its place in the development of woman’s intellectual opportunities is obvious.