Sara Lippincott, better known by her pseudonym "Grace Greenwood," was one of the earliest women newspaper correspondents; she was preceded only by Jane Swisshelm as the earliest woman Washington correspondent. Her long writing career began when she was only thirteen, with the publication of her earliest poems. In 1844, at the age of twenty-one, she began her journalism career publishing informal letters as "Grace Greenwood." The letter genre remained the major form of her journalistic writing: for nearly sixty years, she wrote letters for various newspapers and periodicals to report her experiences and observations of Washington, Europe, and the western United States and to express her strong opinions on such issues as slavery, woman's rights, and capital punishment. Several collections of her letters were published during her lifetime.

In addition to her popular letters, her essays, stories, and sketches appeared over the years in the Saturday Evening Post, Hearth...