Eveleen Laura Knaggs Mason (September 3, 1838 – September 7, 1914) was an American writer, suffragist, and clubwoman.

Eveleen Laura Mason
Born
Eveleen Laura Knaggs

September 3, 1838
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedSeptember 7, 1914 (aged 76)
Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation(s)Writer, suffragist, clubwoman

Early life and education

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Knaggs was born in Boston, the daughter of Thomas Jackson Knaggs and Elizabeth Milner Knaggs.[1]

Career

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Mason taught school as a young woman, fostered children in her home, and worked to establish a travelers' aid program for young women new to Boston.[1][2] She was a member of the Brookline Education Society,[3] a vice president of the Moral Education Association of Massachusetts,[4] and founder and president of the Queens of Home Club.[5][6] She wrote fiction and non-fiction with utopian, feminist, political and spiritualist themes.[7][8][9] Her work is sometimes counted with early American science fiction by women writers.[10][2]

Mason gave the opening prayer at an 1880 National Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Chicago,[11] and she spoke at the 1884 meeting of the Wisconsin Women's Suffrage Convention.[12] "Miss Eveleen L. Mason, an attractive, refined-looking lady, made one of the best speeches of the morning", reported The Inter Ocean in 1880. "She has heard it objected to woman suffrage that woman was the helpmeet of man. She thought that was the very reason why she should take a part".[13]

Publications

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  • Hiero-Salem: The Vision of Peace: A Fiction Founded on Ideals which are Grounded in THE REAL, that is Greater than the Greatest of All Human Great Ideals (1889)[14]
  • "What is America's Relation to England?" (1896)[15]
  • An Episode in the Doings of the Dualized (1898)[16]
  • Who Builds? A Romance (1903)[17]
  • Mad? Which? Neither? (1904)[18]
  • Twelve Outputs Selected from Among Lectures and Articles Put Out from 1879 to Summer Tide of 1907 (1907)[19]
  • The Discovery of Discoveries (1908)[20]
  • "'Enthralling and Subjugating Men'" (1908)[21]

Personal life

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Knaggs married Baptist minister August Francke Hermann Mason in 1863.[2] Her husband died in 1903, and she died in 1914, at the age of 76, in Brookline, Massachusetts.[1][10]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Devoted Her Life to Good Work; Mrs. Eveleen Laura Mason, Widow of Rev. A. F. Mason, D.D." Boston Evening Transcript. 1914-09-08. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ a b c Kessler, Carol Farley, ed. (1984). Daring to dream : Utopian stories by United States women, 1836-1919. Internet Archive. Boston : Pandora Press. pp. 138–139. ISBN 978-0-86358-013-0.
  3. ^ Brookline Education Society (Brookline, Mass.) (1896). Year Book of the Brookline Education Society. Harvard University. p. 47.
  4. ^ "History Half Taught; Only One Side, that of Strife, is Fully Shown". The Boston Globe. 1904-05-26. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-07-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ^ "Queens of Home Club; Ladies and Gentlemen Discourse Upon American Principles". Boston Post. 1896-06-16. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-07-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ "Water Lily as National Flower". The Boston Globe. 1896-07-05. p. 9. Retrieved 2024-07-09.
  7. ^ Donaldson, Laura E. (October 1989). "The eve of de‐struction: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the feminist recreation of paradise". Women's Studies. 16 (3–4): 373–387. doi:10.1080/00497878.1989.9978776. ISSN 0049-7878.
  8. ^ Lewes, Darby (1993). "Middle-Class Edens: Women's Nineteenth-century Utopian Fiction and the Bourgeois Ideal". Utopian Studies. 4 (1): 14–25. ISSN 1045-991X.
  9. ^ Lewes, Darby (1989). "Gynotopia: A Checklist of Nineteenth-Century Utopias by American Women". Legacy. 6 (2): 29–41. ISSN 0748-4321.
  10. ^ a b "SFE: Mason, Eveleen Laura". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 2024-07-08.
  11. ^ "Woman's Suffrage". The Inter Ocean. 1880-06-01. p. 8. Retrieved 2024-07-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ "Wisconsin Women's Suffrage Convention". The Boscobel Dial. 1884-08-26. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ "Want the Ballot; The Women Represented in the National Suffrage Association Convention Do, Very Much". The Inter Ocean. 1880-06-03. p. 8. Retrieved 2024-07-09 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ^ Mason, Eveleen Laura (1889). Hiero-salem : the vision of peace, a fiction founded on ideals which are grounded in the real, that is greater than the greatest of all human great ideals. New York Public Library. Boston : J.G. Cupples Company.
  15. ^ Mason, Eveleen Laura. "What is America's Relation to England?" The Arena 17 (1896): 930-946. via Internet Archive
  16. ^ Mason, Eveleen L. (Eveleen Laura) (1898). An episode in the doings of the dualized . The Library of Congress. [Boston, Press of Fish & Libby].
  17. ^ Mason, Eveleen L. (Eveleen Laura) (1909). Who builds? A romance ... Dedicated to brother builders of the 32⁰ and 33⁰ of Ancient Scottish rites and to builders yet more ancient the world throughout. The Library of Congress. [Brookline? Mass.]
  18. ^ Mason, Eveleen L. (Eveleen Laura); Geo. H. Ellis (Firm) pbl (1904). Mad? Which? Neither?. New York Public Library. [Boston : G.H. Ellis].
  19. ^ Eveleen Laura Mason (1907). Twelve Outputs Selected from Among Lectures and Articles Put Out from 1879 to Summer Tide of 1907. New York Public Library.
  20. ^ Mason, Eveleen L. (Eveleen Laura) (1909). The discovery of dicoveries. New York Public Library. [Brookline? Mass.]
  21. ^ Mason, Eveleen Laura (1908-01-25). "'Enthralling and Subjugating Men'". The Woman's Tribune. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-07-09 – via Newspapers.com.
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