author
Mary Lowell Putnam
1810–1898
A gifted linguist and lively nineteenth-century writer, she turned deep curiosity about Europe into history, translation, poetry, and political commentary. Her work brought Hungarian and Polish subjects to American readers with unusual range and energy.
1 Audiobook
Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal
by Mary Lowell Putnam
About the author
Born in Boston in 1810 as Mary Traill Spence Lowell, she grew up in the prominent Lowell family and later married Boston merchant Samuel R. Putnam. She became known as an American author and translator with a remarkable talent for languages, reportedly becoming fluent in several European tongues, including French, Italian, German, Polish, Swedish, and Hungarian.
Her early book work included a translation of Fredrika Bremer’s The Handmaid in 1844. After traveling abroad and gathering material firsthand, she wrote extensively on Central and Eastern Europe, including History of the Constitution of Hungary in its Relations to Austria and other works on Hungary, Poland, and the Habsburg empire. She also wrote poetry and drama, showing an unusually wide literary range.
She died in Boston in 1898. Today, she is remembered not only for her own writing but also for helping introduce American readers to European political and literary subjects that were not widely familiar in her time.