Alice Morse Earle
Alice Morse Earle (April 27, 1851 – February 16, 1911) was an American historian and author from Worcester, Massachusetts. She was christened Mary Alice by her parents Edwin Morse and Abby Mason Clary. On 15 April 1874, she married Henry Earle of New York, changing her name from Mary Alice Morse to Alice Morse Earle. Her writings, beginning in 1890, focussed on small sociological details rather than grand details, and thus are invaluable for modern social historians. She wrote a number of books on colonial America (and especially the New England region) such as Curious Punishments of Bygone Days.
She is credited with the quote “The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present.”
She was a passenger aboard the RMS Republic when, while in a dense fog, that ship collided with the SS Florida. During the transfer of passengers, Alice fell into the water. Her near drowning in 1909 off the coast of Nantucket during this abortive trip to Egypt weakened her health sufficiently that she died two years later, in Hempstead, Long Island.
Partial bibliography
| Library resources about Alice Morse Earle |
| By Alice Morse Earle |
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- The Sabbath in Puritan New England (1891)
- China Collecting in America (1892)
- Customs and Fashions in Old New England (1893)
- Diary of Anna Green Winslow, A Boston School Girl of 1771 (1894)
- Costume of Colonial Times (1894)
- Colonial Dames and Goodwives (1895)
- Colonial Days in Old New York (1896)
- Curious Punishments of Bygone Days (1896)
- In Old Narragansett: Romances and Realities (1898)
- Home Life in Colonial Days (1898)
- Child Life in Colonial Days (1899)
- Stagecoach and Tavern Days at www.quinnipiac.edu Stagecoach and Tavern Days (1900) or at Internet Archive
- Old Time Gardens (1901)
- Sun Dials and Roses of Yesterday (1902)
- Two Centuries of Costume in America, 1620–1820 (2 vols., 1903)
Further reading
- "Alice Morse Earle," in Notable American Women: Volume 1. 4th ed., Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975.
- Susan Reynolds Williams, Alice Morse Earle and the Domestic History of Early America. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013.
External links
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Alice Morse Earle |
- Article at Encyclopædia Britannica
- Works by Alice Morse Earle at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Alice Morse Earle at Internet Archive
- Works by Alice Morse Earle at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Review of Earle's Home Life in Colonial Days
- Colonial days in old New York by Alice Morse Earle. Cornell University Library New York State Historical Literature Collection, (reprinted by Cornell University Library Digital Collections)
- https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?q=Yesterday+is+history.+Tomorrow+is+a+mystery.+and+Today+is+a+gift
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