author
Katharine Pearson Woods
1853–1923
A bestselling American novelist of the late 19th century, she wrote socially engaged fiction that brought labor questions and Christian socialism into popular reading. Her breakout novel, Metzerott, Shoemaker, helped make her one of Baltimore’s best-known literary figures of her day.
1 Audiobook
Metzerott, Shoemaker
by Katharine Pearson Woods
About the author
Born in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) on January 28, 1853, Katharine Pearson Woods became an American novelist, labor activist, and advocate of Christian socialism. She is best remembered for Metzerott, Shoemaker (1889), a novel whose success brought her wide attention and linked her name to reform-minded fiction.
Woods wrote during a period when many readers were debating poverty, work, religion, and social responsibility, and those concerns shaped both her public life and her books. She was also active in Baltimore literary circles, and her early success was important enough to be remembered by the Woman's Literary Club of Baltimore as part of its own origin story.
She died in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 19, 1923. Although she is less widely read now than some of her contemporaries, her work still stands out for the way it joined storytelling with questions of justice, labor, and faith.