Editorial September 5, 1994 Issue

Mary Baker Eddy: a different kind of author

Mary Metzner Trammell

Some authors turn out book after book, on subject after subject. Mary Baker Eddy, however, wrote one principal book that, in a sense, covers all subjects. She also wrote sermons, hundreds of letters, essays—and some poetry. But Mrs. Eddy always thought of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as her greatest work, and the rest of the world still thinks of it that way. And she spent her last forty-five years letting that book take shape in her life and on paper.

From the time she was just seven years old—the frail youngest daughter of a large farming family outside Concord, New Hampshire—Mary Baker knew she'd someday write a book. Eventually, she told this to her older brother Albert, a young law student at Dartmouth College. Albert tutored her in subjects that would give her a good background as a writer: literature, philosophy, vocabulary, languages.

By the time she was twelve, Mary was writing poetry—and letters. And already her thoughts were gravitating toward God. As a young woman, she encountered extraordinary sorrows—the passing of her beloved Albert, the loss of her first husband in a yellow fever epidemic, a failed second marriage, separation from her only child, broken health, poverty. Yet Mary never stopped writing.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

"...before the world was"