Helen Dore Boylston

Helen Dore Boylston (April 4, 1895 – September 30, 1984) was the American writer of the popular "Sue Barton" nurse series and "Carol Page" actor series.

Biography Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Boylston spent her childhood there, She thought of studying medicine like her father, but chose nursing since the training was shorter. She graduated as a nurse from Massachusetts General Hospital in 1915 and sailed for France to serve in the First World War with the Harvard Medical Unit, as part of the British Expeditionary Force. specializing as a nurse anesthetist and reaching the rank of captain. Boylston met reporter Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of the not-yet-famous Laura Ingalls Wilder on a train between Paris and Warsaw.

Boylston was still anxious for adventure and wrote to a friend "Daddy wants me to settle down, but I'm young! I'm young! Why shouldn't I live? What is old age if it has no memories except of 40 years or so of blank days?" In August they purchased a maroon Model T Ford which they named "Zenobia" in honor of the Bedouin queen of ancient times, and set off to Albania with their French maid, Yvonne. An account of the journey, called Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford was published in 1983.

In the summer of 1928 Boylston arrived at Rocky Ridge, the Wilder family farmhouse in Mansfield, Missouri. Encouraged by the publication of her War Diary in book form, she decided to gain a living by writing, though she also supported in part by inherited income. She initially lived in a tent on a hill near the farmhouse, though the plan was that Boylston and Lane would live in the remodeled and modernized farmhouse, while Lane's parents, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder, moved into a newly built English stone cottage.

Boylston lost considerable sums of investment income in the Depression and in the early 1930s moved east to work again as a nurse. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Boylston began writing and publishing stories more seriously. She published articles and stories in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and Argosy, and wrote a radio script for the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

The books followed the career of a red-haired nurse as she progressed through her training, career, marriage and motherhood, and sought to maintain her independence. and died in Trumbull, Connecticut at the age of 89, leaving no known relatives.

Works

Sister: The War Diary of a Nurse (1920) Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1936) Sue Barton, Senior Nurse (1937) Sue Barton, Visiting Nurse (1938) Sue Barton, Rural Nurse (1939) Sue Barton, Superintendent of Nurses (1940) Sue Barton, Neighborhood Nurse (1949) Sue Barton, Staff Nurse (1952) Carol Goes Backstage (1941) Carol Plays Summer Stock (1942) (published as Carol in Repertory in the United Kingdom, 1944) Carol on Broadway (1944) Carol on Tour (1946) Clara Barton: Founder of American Red Cross (1955 and 1963) Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford (with Rose Wilder Lane) (1983)