Author: Follen, Eliza Lee
Biography:
FOLLEN, Eliza Lee, formerly Cabot (1787-1860: WBIS)
Born in Boston, the fifth of the thirteen children of Samuel Cabot, a prominent merchant, and Sarah (Barrett) Cabot. She was well educated. In 1828 she married Charles Follen, a German refugee nine years her junior. He became a Professor of German at Harvard, 1830-35, and they had one son. They were both members of the Unitarian circle of William Ellery Channing, active in promoting Sunday schools and opposing the slave trade. Eliza Follen--Cabot as she was then-- began a long career of writing for children in 1827 with the first of a series of prose tales, The Well-Spent Hour, published anonymously in Boston and reprinted regularly into the 1860s. She edited The Christian Teacher's Manual for two years from 1828, and The Child's Friend from 1843 to 1850. After the death of her husband, she published his works in five volumes, with a memoir (1841-2). She died in Boston of typhoid fever. (RPW; DAB) HJ