Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was a prominent nineteenth-century American author. She was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended Mount Holyoke College and West Brattleboro Seminary. Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894). In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In Madelon, Mrs. Freeman presents a romantic triangle, with a girl who has French and Indian blood is loved by two cousins, Lot and Burr. Madelon loves Burr, but Burr is unable to admit his feelings, and believes he loves Dorothy Fair. Events leave Burr imprisoned unjustly, Lot gravely wounded and in danger of dying, and Madelon willing to doom herself to save Burr. Madelon was adapted as a film called False Evidence in 1919.

Author Biography

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852 - 1930) was a prominent 19th-century American author. Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her career as a short story writer launched in 1881 when she took first place in a short story contest with her submission "The Ghost Family." When the supernatural caught her interest, the result was a group of short stories which combined domestic realism with supernaturalism and these have proved very influential. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and are among the best of their kind. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894) and she contributed a notable chapter to the collaborative novel The Whole Family (1908).