ABSTRACT
Truly, Sarah Johnson Prichard is one of the nineteenth-century New England writers that has been lost to twentieth-century readers. Other than what can be gleaned from biographical dictionaries, scant information is available. Born January 11, 1830, in Waterbury, Connecticut, to Elizur Edwin and Betsey Jeanette Cooper Prichard, her descendants can be traced back eight generations. Like many of the women writers in this collection, Prichard was well educated for her time. “On Sand Island,” Prichard’s story included in this collection, was originally published in the May 1877 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Prichard knew well her New England area and writes realistically of the sea, the lonely lives of women, and the changing economic times. Her portrayal of the two worlds—the life and activity of the men whose livelihood is connected with the sea and the lonely world of those loved ones back home—reminds one of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Pearl of Orr ‘s Island published in 1862.
