Katherine Prescott Wormeley (January 14, 1830 – August 4, 1908) was a

nurse Nursing is a health care profession that "integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alle ...

in the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

, author, editor, and translator of

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

literary works. Her first name is frequently misspelled as "Katharine".

Biography

Born to Admiral Ralph Randolph Wormeley and Caroline Preble in

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in Suffolk, England. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, ...

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, the daughter of a naval officer, Katherine Prescott Wormeley emigrated to the United States at a young age. During the

, she played a role in the work of the

United States Sanitary Commission The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) was a private Aid agency, relief agency created by federal legislation on June 18, 1861, to support sick and wounded soldiers of the United States Army (Federal / Northern / Union Army) during the Ameri ...

, a civilian agency set up to coordinate the volunteer efforts of women and men who wanted to contribute to the war effort, with noted landscape designer

Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, Social criticism, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the U ...

and the Rev. Henry Bellows. The Commission was a volunteer affiliate of the Union Army. She served as a nurse with the Commission and was later head nurse at the Army Hospital at Portsmouth Grove near

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island, United States. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and nort ...

. She lived in Newport, in a cottage designed by

Charles Follen McKim Charles Follen McKim (August 24, 1847 – September 14, 1909) was an American Beaux-Arts architect of the late 19th century. Along with William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the par ...

, that was next door to

John La Farge John La Farge (March 31, 1835 – November 14, 1910) was an American artist whose career spanned illustration, murals, interior design, painting, and popular books on his Asian travels and other art-related topics. La Farge made stained glass ...

's house.LaFarge, John, S.J. ''The Manner Is Ordinary''. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954, pp. 41-42. Katherine Prescott Wormeley died on August 4, 1908, at her summer home in

Jackson, New Hampshire Jackson is a town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,028 at the 2020 census, up from 816 at the 2010 census. Jackson is a resort area in the White Mountains. Parts of the White Mountain National Forest are in ...

. She is buried in the

Island Cemetery The Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery are a pair of separate cemeteries on Farewell and Warner Street in Newport, Rhode Island. Together they contain over 5,000 graves, including a colonial-era slave cemetery and Jewish graves. The pai ...

in Newport, Rhode Island.

Works

Wormeley was one of the best known translators of her time, having translated from the French language the complete works of

Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly ; ; born Honoré Balzac; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence ''La Comédie humaine'', which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is ...

(40 vols., 1883–97) for American readers. She also translated the Narrative of Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, the memoirs of Madame de Motteville on

Anne of Austria Anne of Austria (; ; born Ana María Mauricia; 22 September 1601 – 20 January 1666) was Queen of France from 1615 to 1643 by marriage to King Louis XIII. She was also Queen of Navarre until the kingdom's annexation into the French crown ...

, as well as works by

Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, ; ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the great writers in the French language and world liter ...

(6 vols., 1892),

Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, Grandee of Spain, GE (; 16 January 16752 March 1755), was a French soldier, diplomat, and memoirist. He was born in Paris at the Hôtel Selvois, 6 rue Taranne (demolished in 1876 to make way for the Boulevard ...

Alphonse Daudet Alphonse Daudet (; 13 May 184016 December 1897) was a French novelist. He was the husband of Julia Daudet and father of Edmée, Léon and Lucien Daudet. Early life Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the ' ...

, and

Alexandre Dumas Alexandre Dumas (born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas , was a French novelist and playwright. His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the mos ...

, among others. In 1904 she published a 2-volume selection of essays translated from

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (; 23 December 1804 – 13 October 1869) was a French literary critic. Early life He was born in Boulogne, educated there, and studied medicine at the Collège Charlemagne in Paris (1824–27). In 1828, he se ...

's ''Causeries du Lundi'', ''Portraits de Femmes'', and ''Portraits Littéraires''. She also published ''The U. S. Sanitary Commission'' (Boston, 1863). A volume of her letters from the headquarters of the Commission with the

Army of the Potomac The Army of the Potomac was the primary field army of the Union army in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was created in July 1861 shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run and was disbanded in June 1865 following the Battle of ...

during the

peninsular campaign The Peninsula campaign (also known as the Peninsular campaign) of the American Civil War was a major Union operation launched in southeastern Virginia from March to July 1862, the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. The oper ...

in 1862 was published as ''Letters from Headquarters during the Peninsular Campaign''. ''The Other Side of War'' was published in 1888, and ''Life of Balzac'' in 1892.

Family

Her sisters Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer and Ariana Randolph (Wormeley) Curtis (b. 1835) were also writers.

References

Sources

* George M. Fredrickson (1965/1993), ''The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union'', reprint with new preface, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Selected list of works by Katherine Prescott Wormeley at Barnes and Noble

April 16, 1898 ''New York Times'' article titled "''War and Navies - Miss Wormeley's Volume on the Cruel Side of War''"

August 6, 1908 ''New York Times'' obituary for Katherine Prescott Wormeley

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wormeley, Katherine Prescott 1830 births 1908 deaths French–English translators English emigrants to the United States 19th-century American translators 19th-century American women writers 19th-century American writers American Civil War nurses American women nurses United States Sanitary Commission people Wormeley family