Florence Nightingale

About Laura E. Richards

Laura E. Richards (1850–1943), a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, was born in Boston to eminent parents: Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the Perkins School for the Blind, and Julia Ward Howe, social reformer and lyricist of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In 1871, she married Henry Richards (1848–1949), architect and industrialist, and moved with him to Gardiner, Maine. Following the example of her parents, she brought about many social reforms and civic improvements in her hometown. She also wrote more than ninety works, mostly in the fields of children’s literature (to please her children) and biography. Captain January (1890), a bestseller, was twice made into a movie, the second time starring Shirley Temple. Her two-volume biography of her mother, Julia Ward Howe (1915), was the first biography to be honored by a Pulitzer Prize.