Elia W. Peattie

Elia Wilkinson Peattie (January 15, 1862 – July 12, 1935) was an American author, journalist and critic.

Biography Elia Wilkinson was the daughter of Frederick and Amanda (Cahill) Wilkinson. She was born on January 15, 1862, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but moved with her family to Chicago when she was young. She stopped attending school when she was fourteen, but kept up a reading habit. In 1883 she married Robert Burns Peattie, a Chicago journalist.

She began writing short stories for newspapers, and in 1886 became a reporter with the Chicago Tribune and subsequently the Chicago Daily News. In 1888 the family moved to Omaha after Peattie and her husband accepted jobs at the Omaha Daily Herald. When Gilbert Hitchcock bought the Daily Herald and combined it into the Omaha World-Herald Peattie became chief editorial writer for the paper. Peattie wrote over 800 columns, editorials, and stories in the World-Herald

Peattie subsequently returned to Chicago and became literary editor of the Chicago Tribune. Some time during her period in Illinois, she was a member of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Ogle County. One of her sons was the famed botanist, naturalist and author Donald Culross Peattie.

Works The Story of America (1889) The Judge (1889) A Trip Through Wonderland (1889) With Scrip and Staff (1891) The American Peasant: A Timely Allegory (1892) The Pictorial Story of America (1895) The Shape of Fear and Other Ghostly Tales (1898) The Edge of Things (1903) Castle, Knight & Troubadour: In an Apology and Three Tableaux (1903) Ickery Ann: And Other Girls and Boys (1907) Annie Laurie and Azalea (1913) Azalea at Sunset Gap (1914) Lotta Embury's Career (1915) Azalea's Silver Web (1915) Sarah Brewster's Relatives (1916) The Newcomers (1917) Times and Manner: A Pageant (1918) Songs from a Southern Garden (1930)