Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield

Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield
Born(1858-09-01)September 1, 1858
Little Compton, Rhode Island, United States
DiedNovember 15, 1918(1918-11-15) (aged 60)
New York City, United States
Burial place
Woodlawn Cemetery, New York City, United States
EmployerAtlantic Monthly
Organization(s)Colony Club
Municipal Art Society of New York
SpouseEdwin Blashfield (m. 1881)
Parents

Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield (September 1, 1858 – November 15, 1918) was an American writer, historian and translator.

Biography

Blashfield was born on September 1, 1858, in Little Compton, Rhode Island, United States.[1][2] Her father was egyptologist and translator Charles Edwin Wilbour[3][4] and her mother was feminist, suffragist and writer Charlotte Beebe Wilbour.[5][6] She had three siblings: Theodora, Victor and Zoe. She was educated at the convent school of the Sisters of Saint Mary the Virgin.[7] She then studied at finishing schools in Florence, Italy, and in Paris, France, becoming fluent in French and Italian with knowledge of German, Arabic and Latin.[7]

Blashfield met painter Edwin Blashfield at a dance in Paris in 1876 and they married in 1881.[8] They lived in New York City from 1882.[6] Together they wrote Italian Cities (1900) and translated Vasari's Lives of the Painters (4 vols., 1897) from Italian.[3] She contributed the writing and her husband contributed the illustrations.[7]

Blashfield wrote for the Atlantic Monthly (such as short stories The Education of a Saint and The Ghoul)[9] and a collection of biographies of women, Portraits and Backgrounds: Hrotsvitha, Aphra Behn, Aïssé, Rosalba Carriera (1917).[6] English writer Virginia Woolf used Blashfield's work on the English playwright, poet and spy Aphra Behn[10] as the basis of her own work on Behn.[7]

Blashfield was a charter member of the Colony Club and a member of the Municipal Art Society of New York.[3][11] She called for investment in public art and beauty.[7]

In 1916, Blashfield and her siblings Theodora and Victor donated their father's book collection to the Brooklyn Museum.[3][12][13]

Blashfield died of the Spanish Flu on November 15, 1918, in New York, New York, United States, aged 60.[3] She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery. American writer Kate Douglas Wiggin wrote in the New York Times obituary for Blashfield that "New York has lost a woman of very uncommon and very precious type."[7][14]

In 1919, a granite and mosaic memorial foundation was gifted by the Municipal Art Society of New York to the city in Blashfield's memory, located at Bridgemarket beneath the Queensboro Bridge in Manhattan, New York City.[6][15][16] In June 2003, 85 years after Blashfield's death, restoration work took place on the memorial fountain.[17][18]

Select publications

  • Afloat on the Nile (1891)
  • A Day with the Donkey Boys (1892)
  • Italian Cities (1900)
  • Masques of Cupid (1901)
  • The Education of a Saint (1904)[9]
  • The Ghoul (1912), set in Luxor, Egypt[2][19][20]
  • Portraits and Backgrounds: Hrotsvitha, Aphra Behn, Aïssé, Rosalba Carriera (1917)

References

  1. ↑ Cameron, Mabel Ward (1924). The Biographical Cyclopaedia of American Women. Halvord publishing Company. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-8103-3990-3. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  2. 1 2 "Summary Bibliography: Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield". The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFD). Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "OBITUARY Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield". American Art News. 17 (7): 4–4. 1918. ISSN 1944-0227 – via JSTOR.
  4. ↑ Ackerman, Gerald M. (1994). American Orientalists. p. 16. ISBN 978-2-86770-078-1.
  5. ↑ "Charlotte Beebe Wilbour". Little Compton Historical Society. April 27, 2020. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Tauranac, John (August 15, 2018). Manhattan's Little Secrets: Uncovering Mysteries in Brick and Mortar, Glass and Stone. Simon and Schuster. pp. 160–163. ISBN 978-1-4930-3048-4.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield". Little Compton Historical Society. April 1, 2020. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  8. ↑ "Edwin Howland Blashfield papers: NYU Special Collections Finding Aids". New York University. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  9. 1 2 "Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield". The Atlantic. August 1, 1912. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  10. ↑ Campbell, Elaine (1985). "Aphra Behn's Surinam interlude". University of Wollongong. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  11. ↑ "Collective Biographies of Women". University of Virginia. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  12. ↑ Bothmer, Bernard V.; Keith, Jean L. (1970). Brief Guide to the Department of Ancient Art. Brooklyn Museum. p. 2.
  13. ↑ Spalding-Stracey, Gillian (April 28, 2020). The Cross in the Visual Culture of Late Antique Egypt. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-43051-8.
  14. ↑ Wiggin, Kate Douglas (November 20, 1918). "Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  15. ↑ "The Evangeline Blashfield Fountain Historical Marker". Historical Marker Database. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  16. ↑ "The Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield Memorial Fountain, (sculpture)". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  17. ↑ Kinetz, Erika (June 8, 2003). "NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: QUEENSBRIDGE -- CITYPEOPLE; A Shadow From the Past, Back Into the Light". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  18. ↑ "Monument of the Month: Evangeline Blashfield Fountain – The Municipal Art Society of New York". Retrieved April 27, 2026.
  19. ↑ Bleiler, Everett Franklin (1983). The guide to supernatural fiction. Kent, Ohio : Kent State University Press. p. 339.
  20. ↑ McSpadden, Joseph Walker (1976). Famous Psychic and Ghost Stories. Books for Libraries Press. p. 245. ISBN 978-0-8369-4248-4.
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