"People seem to think that life began with the achievement of personal independence." -- Katharine Anthony
Katharine Susan Anthony, sometimes also spelled Katherine (27 November 1877, Roseville, Logan County, Arkansas—20 November 1965, New York City, age 87), was a US biographer best known for "The Lambs" (1945), a controversial study of the British writers Charles and Mary Lamb.
"For mothers who must earn, there is indeed no leisure time problem. The long hours of earning are increased by the hours of domestic labor, until no slightest margin for relaxation or change of thought remains.""Persons who are born too soon or born too late seldom achieve the eminence of those who are born at the right time.""Principles are a dangerous form of social dynamite.""The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where can the lovers of truth turn if not to history?""To the biographer all lives bar none are dramatic constructions."
Katharine Anthony was born in Roseville, Logan County, Arkansas, the third daughter of Ernest Augustus Anthony 1846-1904 and Susan Jane Cathey 1845-1917. Her father was a grocer and later a police officer.
She studied at Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg, and the University of Chicago. She received a Ph.B degree from Chicago in 1905 and taught at Wellesley College in 1907. She became a public school teacher by 1910 and worked at that time in Fort Smith, Sebastian County, Arkansas. She moved from Arkansas perhaps because her mother had died in 1917, and by 1920 she was living in Manhattan with her life-partner Elisabeth Irwin (1880—1942), the founder of the Little Red School House.
Her book Catherine the Great was positively reviewed in the New York Times (Dec 20, 1925, pg BR8), which notes that Miss Anthony had, apparently for the first time, access to all of Catherine's private memoirs. Her book Marie Antoinette was called a "...fresh and original life of Marie ..." by the New York Times reviewer (Jan 29, 1933 pg BR5).
Her books Catherine the Great and Queen Elizabeth each sold more than 100,000 copies.
She died at St. Vincent's Hospital, two weeks after having a heart attack. Her obituary appeared in the New York Times on Nov 22, 1965 (pg 37). She was survived by a sister, Mrs. Blanche Brown of Berkeley, California. Her funeral was in New York City, and burial at Gaylordsville, Connecticut where she had a summer home.
"Mothers Who Must Earn" 1914 (reprinted in West Side Studies, Ayer Company ISBN 0-405-05434-3)
"Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia"
"Margaret Fuller: A Psychological Biography", Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York. 1920.
"Catherine the Great". New York: Garden City Publishing Company. 1925. (reprint Mar 2003, Kessinger Publishing, 344 pages, ISBN 0-7661-4351-1)
"Queen Elizabeth" 1929 (reprint Mar 2004, Kessinger Publishing, 316 pages ISBN 0-7661-8640-7)
"Louisa May Alcott", Alfred A Knopf, 1938
"First Lady of the Revolution: The Life of Mercy Otis Warren." George S MacManus Company (reprint Kennikat Press [1972, c1958], Port Washington, N.Y., 258 pages ISBN 0-8046-1656-6)
"The Lambs", A.A. Knopf, New York 1945, 264 pages
"Dolly Madison, Her Life and Times" 1949
"Susan B. Anthony: Her Personal History and Her Era" 1954