author
Mrs. Robert Hoskins
b. 1837
A Methodist missionary in India, she wrote a warm, concise life of physician Clara A. Swain, one of the best-known early medical missionaries to women in India. Her work reflects years of firsthand experience in mission circles and a strong gift for languages.
1 Audiobook
Clara A. Swain, M.D.
by Mrs. Robert Hoskins
About the author
Known in print as Mrs. Robert Hoskins, she was identified in library records as Charlotte Lewis Hoskins and is listed as living from 1837 to 1917. She is best remembered today for Clara A. Swain, M.D. (1912), a short biography published in Boston by the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Available catalog and audiobook sources describe her as a Methodist Church missionary in India in the late nineteenth century. Those same sources say she remained active in Bible translation work until late in life and was known for strong language skills, including speaking French fluently and reading several other languages.
Only a small amount of biographical information appears to be readily available online, but what survives suggests a writer closely connected to missionary work rather than a career literary figure. Her surviving book has lasting interest because it preserves the story of Clara A. Swain through the perspective of someone shaped by the same religious and cross-cultural world.