Katherine Prescott Wormeley

Katherine Prescott Wormeley (January 14, 1830[1] – August 4, 1908) was an American nurse in the Civil War, author, editor, and translator of French language literary works. Her first name is frequently spelled as "Katharine".

Katherine Prescott Wormeley
Katherine Prescott Wormeley, ca. 1861–1865
Born(1830-01-14)January 14, 1830
Ipswich, England
DiedAugust 4, 1908(1908-08-04) (aged 78)
Jackson, New Hampshire, United States
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)nurse, translator

Biography

Born to Admiral Ralph Randolph Wormeley and Caroline Preble[2] in Ipswich,[3] Suffolk,[4] England, the daughter of a naval officer, Katherine Prescott Wormeley emigrated to the United States at a young age.

During the American Civil War, she played a role in the work of the United States Sanitary Commission, a civilian agency set up to coordinate the volunteer efforts of women and men who wanted to contribute to the war effort, with noted landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted and the Rev. Henry Bellows. The Commission was a volunteer affiliate of the Union Army. She served as a nurse with the Commission and was later head nurse at the Army Hospital at Portsmouth Grove near Newport, Rhode Island. She lived in Newport, in a cottage designed by Charles Follen McKim, that was next door to John La Farge's house.[5]

Katherine Prescott Wormeley died on August 4, 1908, at her summer home in Jackson, New Hampshire. She is buried in the Island Cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island.

Works

She was one of the best known translators of her time, having translated from the French language the complete works of Honoré de Balzac (40 vols., 1883–97) for American readers. She also translated the Narrative of Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, the memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria, as well as works by Molière (6 vols., 1892), Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, Alphonse Daudet, and Alexandre Dumas, among others.[3][6][7] In 1904 she published a 2-volume selection of essays translated from Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi, Portraits de Femmes, and Portraits Littéraires.[8]

She also published The U. S. Sanitary Commission (Boston, 1863). A volume of her letters from the headquarters of the Commission with the Army of the Potomac during the peninsular campaign in 1862 was published as Letters from Headquarters during the Peninsular Campaign. The Other Side of War was published in 1888, and Life of Balzac in 1892.[3][4]

Family

Her sisters Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer and Ariana Randolph (Wormeley) Curtis (b. 1835) were also writers.[4][9]

See also

References
  1. "Subjects of Biographies". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1990.
  2. Lindqwister, Elizabeth. "Civil War Men and Women: Glimpses of Their Lives Through Photography- Katharine Prescott Wormeley". Library of Congress Research Guides. Springshare. Retrieved November 12, 2022.
  3. Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Wormeley, Katharine Prescott" . Encyclopedia Americana.
  4. Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1889). "Wormeley, Mary Elizabeth" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
  5. LaFarge, John, S.J. The Manner Is Ordinary. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954, pp. 41-42.
  6. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1902/11/01/118484594.pdf
  7. "Three Editions of Balzac". The New York Times. 28 October 1899.
  8. "Review of Portraits of the Seventeenth Century by C. A. Sainte-Beuve, translated by Katherine P. Wormeley". The Athenaeum (4030): 78. January 21, 1905.
  9. Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Wormeley, Katharine Prescott" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

Sources
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