FREEMAN, MARY ELEANOR WILKINS, (1862 1930), American writer, was born in Randolph (Mass.), Jan. 7, 1862, of Puritan ancestry. Her early education, chiefly from reading and observation, was supplemented by a course at Mount Holyoke seminary, South Hadley (Mass.). She subsequently lived in Brattleboro (Vt.), until her marriage in 1902 to Dr. Charles M. Freeman of Metuchen (N. J.). She contributed poems and stories to magazines and published several books for children, including Young Lucretia and Other Stories (1892) and Once upon a Time and Other Child Verses A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891) gave her a prominent place among American short story writers. Her novels, however, are poorly constructed and, though successful in the portrayal of character, lack the com pression, suggestiveness, and intensity of her short stories. Through her tales she has preserved vanishing aspects of New England life. She died at Metuchen, N. J., on March 13, 1930.
Among her novels the best, perhaps, are Jane Field (18o2) and Pembroke (1894). Besides her characteristic depictions of rural New England she has published The Wind in the Rose-Bush 0903), a collection of eerie ghost tales; Giles Corey, Yeoman (1893), a prose tragedy founded on incidents from New England history; the problem novel, The Portion of Labor (i 90 i) ; Jerome, A Poor Young Man (1897), a purpose novel; The Long Arm (1895), a detective story which won a prize of $2,000, and many others. Good criticism is afforded by F. L. Pattee's "On the Terminal Moraine of New England Puritanism," in his Side Lights on American Literature (1922).