New Schedule: Beginning May 30, many Smithsonian museums will return to their normal operating hours, open seven days a week, including the National Portrait Gallery. We’re excited to welcome you!
IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more.
This media is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.
Artist
Auguste Edouart, 1788 - 1861
Sitter
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, 24 Oct 1788 - 30 Apr 1879
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale: Communications\Journalist\Editor\Magazine
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale: Literature\Writer\Magazine article
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale: Communications\Journalist\Columnist
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale: Society and Social Change\Reformer\Activist
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale: Literature\Writer\Novelist
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale: Society and Social Change\Reformer\Feminist
Portrait
Place
United States\Pennsylvania\Philadelphia\Philadelphia
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Robert L. McNeil, Jr.
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
Object number
NPG.91.126.55.B
Exhibition Label
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale was a thirty-four-year-old New Hampshire housewife when her husband died suddenly, leaving her with five small children to support. Putting her literary propensity to use, she published poetry and a novel. In 1828 she was offered the editorship of the Boston-based Ladies' Magazine (the first American periodical planned exclusively for women) and in 1837 was installed as literary editor of Louis Godey's Lady's Book. Hale promised her readers "literary excellence and artistic beauty, still keeping the moral tone onward and upward." A strong advocate for increased educational opportunities for women (within the accepted female sphere), Hale proclaimed that woman in the nineteenth century stood "side by side with man, a help-meet for him in all his pursuits and improvements."
