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American poet

Sara Jane Lippincott (pseudonym Grace Greenwood) (née Clarke; September 23, 1823 – April 20, 1904) was an American writer, poet, correspondent, lecturer, and newspaper founder. One of the first women to gain access into the Congressional press galleries, she used her questions to advocate for social reform and women's rights. Her best known books for children are entitled, History of My Pets (1850); Recollections of My Childhood (1851); Stories of Many Lands (1866); Merrie England (1854); Bonnie Scotland (1861); Stories and Legends of Travel and History; Stories and Sights of France and Italy (1867). The volumes for older readers are two series of collected prose writings, Greenwood Leaves (1849, 1851); Poems (1850); Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe (1852); A Forest Tragedy (1856); A Record of Five Years (1867); New Life in New Lands (1873); Victoria, Queen of England. This last was published, in 1883, by Anderson & Allen of New York, and Sampson, Low & Marston, London. Lippincott was connected as editor and contributor with various American magazines, as well as weekly and daily papers. Lippincott also wrote much for London journals, especially for All the Year Round. For several years, she lived almost wholly in Europe, for the benefit of her greatly impaired health and for the education of her daughter. When she returned to the United States, she lived in Washington, D. C., and then New York. She was a prominent member of the literary society of New York along with Anne Lynch Botta, Edgar Allan Poe, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Horace Greeley, Richard Henry Stoddard, Andrew Carnegie, Mary Mapes Dodge, Julia Ward Howe, Charles Butler, Fitz Greene Halleck, Delia Bacon, and Bayard Taylor, among others.

Sara Jane Clarke was born on September 23, 1823, at Pompey, New York to parents Deborah Baker Clarke (c. 1791–1874) and Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke (1770–1854), a descendant of the family of Jonathan Edwards. Fearless, at ten years of age, she rode a bare backed horse, standing on his back. At the age of twelve, she went to school in Rochester, New York living with her older brother. There was nothing remarkable about her education, but she did study Italian, algebra, calculus, English and French history, though literature was her delight, and it became evident that writing was her vocation. At the age of sixteen, she was providing "fresh, piquant, racy" pieces to the Rochester papers. She removed with her family in 1842 to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, where her father practiced as a physician, and which she considered to be her home time for the rest of her life. There, she attended the Greenwood Institute, a ladies' academy, from which she may have taken her pseudonym. She left school at the age of nineteen.

Not long after she returned home, in 1845 and 1846, she started writing using the pen name, Grace Greenwood. The earliest writing of Lippincott was in the form of poetry and children's stories, which she published in local papers. In 1844, she drew national attention, at age 21, with a poem published in the New York Mirror, then under the editorship of George Pope Morris and Nathaniel Parker Willis. Soon after, she was writing for the Home Journal and other literary magazines of the day, under both her given name and her pseudonym. In the February 14, 1846 issue of the Home Journal, The Wife's Appeal, a poem by Sara J. Clarke, is published just above Tit for Tat, a story by Grace Greenwood. By October 1849, Godey's Lady's Book listed her as an assistant editor and she was also editor of Godey's Dollar Newspaper. For six or eight years, her summer home was New Brighton. In winter, she was in Philadelphia, Washington D. C., New York City, writing for Whittier, or for Willis and Morris, or for Neal's Gazette, or for Godey. Lippincott was the first "lady correspondent" in Washington, D. C., beginning her work in that line with letters to a Philadelphia paper in 1850. That year, many of her early sketches and letters were collected and republished by Ticknor & Fields under the name of Greenwood Leaves. She would go on to become a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post. She was a highly respected journalist and consistently argued for the reform of women's roles and rights. She joined the National Era, a weekly abolitionist newspaper, and copyedited the serialized original version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as well as writing columns, travel letters, and articles. Her staunch abolitionist views contributed to the ongoing national controversy. Lippincott's poetry received significant critical attention. A published collection, Poems (1851), included passionate poetry and references to her intimate friendship to Anna Phillips, indicating an acceptance of intimate same sex friendships. In 1853, she made her first visit to Europe, on an assignment for The New York Times, having the distinction of being the first woman reporter on the Times payroll. She spent a little over a year abroad, which, in the dedication to her daughter of one of her juvenile books, she calls "the golden year of her life". Her accounts of her travels were well received contributions to literature of the day. The correspondence was collected immediately after her return, and published under the title of Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe. Upon her return, she also made frequent excursions into California, writing vivid descriptions of the land. In the fall of 1855, she published Merrie England, the first of a series of books of foreign travel for children. Nathaniel Hawthorne criticized her travel letters, calling her an "ink stained woman" and claiming he could do as well. Despite this, Lippincott seems to have gotten along amiably with Hawthorne's family. She dedicated her children's book Recollections of My Childhood, and Other Stories to his children Julian and Una Hawthorne.

On October 17, 1853, she married Leander K. Lippincott, of Philadelphia, who was a correspondent for several New York papers. That year, Lippincott and her husband started The Little Pilgrim, a monthly American children's magazine devoted to the amusement, instruction, and well being of children. She was soon producing magazine articles and essays, her contributions conveying historical and biographical information. In this paper, Louisa May Alcott made her debut as a writer of children's stories. Collected from time to time, and published by Ticknor & Fields, they made a juvenile library numbering nearly a dozen volumes, remarkable for the felicitous manner in which they conveyed historical information. On October 3, 1855, they had a daughter, Annie Grace. In the spring of 1856, a volume, entitled A Forest Tragedy, and other Tales, appeared; and in the fall of 1857, Stories and Legends of History and Travel, was the second of her travel series.

Distinguishing herself as a lecturer on literary topics, Lippincott also lectured extensively before and during the Civil War on her abolitionist stance and to other social issues, such as prison and asylum reform, as well as the abolition of capital punishment. During the war, Lippincott was a lecturer to soldiers and at United States Sanitary Commission Sanitary Fairs. President Abraham Lincoln referred to her as "Grace Greenwood the Patriot". on April 20, 1904. Lippincott is buried in the Civil War section of Grove Cemetery in New Brighton. Her obituary was on the front page of the New York Times, "proving her importance as a literary figure in the nineteenth century".

Lippincott's style was something quite new, characterized as "brilliant, picturesque, piquante, every line sparkled; the words seemed to bound rather than flow from her pen". Her writings displayed a charm of style which was evident in the best American works of the mid 19th century but was so seldom seen thirty years later. The language was redundant, but not over laden; picturesque, without any effort to be so. A letter writer, she charmed a million readers by the piquant dash and spicy flavor of her style. There appear in the writings of Lippincott three phases of development, three epochs of a literary career. The first lasted from the days of the boarding school till marriage, —from the first merry chit chat and Greenwood Leaves, to the full rounded, mellow prime, as displayed in the letters from Europe. Then follows a decade, during which story writing for children principally occupied her pen. With the Civil War commenced the third period, years "vexed with the drums and tramplings," the struggles of middle life.

This book has multiple authors. The chapter titled "Grace Greenwood,—Mrs. Lippincott" is by Joseph B. Lyman.