You are here

Home / Our Collections / ...

Sanford, Mary Bourchier

Main entrySanford, Mary Bourchier
Birth placeBarrie, Ontario
Birth datec1848
Death placeSeattle, Washington, USA
Death date30 March 1935
Identifier0013
Birth nameMary Bourchier Sanford
Alternate namesM. Bourchier Sanford
Marital statussingle
Religious affiliationAnglican
Paid worksecretary; journalist
BiographyGreat grand-daughter of a United Empire Loyalist, and a loyal Canadian herself, Mary Bourchier Sanford (c1848-1935) was one of the many Canadian women writers who found better employment opportunities in the United States. Likely the only woman staff columnist on the humorous weekly, GRIP, during the 1870s, she aspired to an independent literary career but earned her living as a private secretary in Cleveland, Baltimore and New York. She conducted a vigorous freelance writing career after hours, contributing fiction and non-fiction to an impressive array of Canadian, American and British periodicals. The strain of maintaining two careers resulted in a nervous breakdown in 1907. Her first two historical romances were well received but not profitable enough to set her free from office work, partly because she did not negotiate favourable contracts with her publishers. Her children's story of Labrador, THE WANDERING TWINS (1904), was adopted as a reader in Kansas schools and Sundays Schools and continued to sell for many years. In THE ROMANCE OF A JESUIT MISSION (1897) minor points of doctrine offended some Roman Catholics and thus alienated its most obvious market. She made amends in her later work, THE TRAIL OF THE IROQUOIS (1924).
ResidencesBarrie, Ontario (1848-1881); Cleveland, Ohio (c1882-); Baltimore, Maryland; New York (1895-1910); Bellevue, Washington (1930); Seattle, Washington (-1935)
Geographic regionsOntario; USA
Primary genresfiction; non-fiction; journalism
BooksROMANCE OF A JESUIT MISSION (1897); THE WANDERING TWINS (1904); THE YOUNG GORDONS IN CANADA (1913); THE TRAIL OF THE IROQUOIS (1924); URANIA'S TRAINING (1925); ISLE OF GLADNESS (193-); THE HAPPY HARFORDS (1938)
PeriodicalsARTHUR'S MAGAZINE; BLACK CAT; BOY'S OWN; CANADIAN MONTHLY; CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE; CHURCHMAN; CRITIC, DEMOREST'S MAGAZINE; EPOCH; EVENING POST; FAR AND NEAR; GARDEN AND FOREST; GODEY'S; GRIP; HARPER'S BAZAAR; HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE; HERALD; HOME-MAKER; HOUSEHOLD; LIPPINCOTT'S; MCCLURE'S; NEW PETERSON; NEW YORK TRIBUNE; NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW; OBSERVER; PUCK; ROSE-BELFORD'S; SHORT STORIES; SUNBEAMS; TASMANIAN MAIL; TORONTO DAILY MAIL; VOGUE; WOMAN'S CYCLE
Other publicationsAnthologized in: SCHOOLGIRLS' BUMPER BOOK (1930)
Father's nameSidney Morehouse Sanford
Life dates of father13 December 1813, Quebec - 12 August 1885, Barrie, Ontario; m. 1845
Father's notemerchant; inland roe inspector (fisheries); exciseman
Mother's nameSarah Ann Thompson
Life dates of mother11 May 1820, Oneida, New York - 9 December 1862, Barrie, Ontario; m. 1845
Biographical referencesMorgan, Henry, CANADIAN MEN AND WOMEN OF THE TIME (1912); 1861 Census of Canada; 1871 Census of Canada; 1881 Census of Canada; 1910 United States Federal Census; 1930 United States Federal Census; England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1861-1941
Bibliographic referencesWatters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 385; British Library
Research referencescomplete
Archival referencesMary Bourchier Sanford Papers, Archives of Ontario
Image creditsLine drawing by Una Vernelli (Vancouver, British Columbia).
CopyrightThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014.