Lily F. Wesselhoeft

Elizabeth Foster Pope Wesselhoeft, who published as Lily F. Wesselhoeft, was born in Dorchester, Boston, on October 21, 1840, and died on January 31, 1919. She was an American writer of children’s books and is generally credited with writing eighteen of them.

She married Dr. Conrad Wesselhoeft in 1863. Sources note that he was a prominent physician and the personal doctor to Louisa May Alcott and her family, and Wesselhoeft’s own fiction has been described as showing some influence from Alcott’s imaginative writing.

She began writing in her forties, which gives her career an especially encouraging shape. Many of her stories center on animals—especially dogs—while others bring in fairy-tale and fantasy elements. Titles associated with her include Sparrow the Tramp, Jerry the Blunderer, Doris and Her Dog Rodney, Flipwing, the Spy, and Jack, the Fire Dog.