Susan Hale was well known in her time not only as a writer but also as a painter and amateur actress with a flair for comedy. Her travel books for children and adults (most co-authored with her brother Edward Everett Hale), newspaper letters, and magazine sketches are characterized by humor and a colloquial style; even potentially dry factual information is lightened by a good-natured voice that refuses to take things too seriously. Hale gained some recognition as a painter in watercolors in the 1870s and 1880s, with works chosen for important exhibitions in Boston and New York. Her public readings of neglected eighteenth-century writers, many of them women, made a unique contribution to late-nineteenth-century American literary culture. She was also well known in the Boston area for her participation in amateur theatricals, not only as a comic actress but behind the scenes as well, writing scripts and originating...