Edith J. Broomhall

Edith J. Broomhall, identified by the Online Books Page as Edith Jane Broomhall (1871–1921), was an American educator and author of Spanish-language teaching books. The evidence available online links her most clearly to Central High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is how she is credited on the title page of Spanish Composition.

Her best-known works include Spoken Spanish: A Conversational Reader and Composition (1918) and Spanish Composition (1921). In Spoken Spanish, she explained that the short sketches in the book grew out of programs for La Tertulia, the Spanish club at North Central High School, suggesting a lively, classroom-based approach to language learning. Spanish Composition was designed to teach Spanish idiom and help students avoid the common mistakes English speakers make when translating too literally.

The surviving record is fairly sparse, but her books still stand out as thoughtful teaching tools from a time when modern language instruction was becoming more practical and conversational. Rather than focusing only on rules, she seems to have cared about how students actually spoke, read, and thought in Spanish.