Anna Matlack Richards

Anna Matlack Richards was an American writer, poet, and amateur scientist known for her literary parody and inventive contributions to chemistry. A member of a prominent Quaker family in Philadelphia, she balanced a prolific writing career with scientific experimentation, often collaborating with her husband, the painter William Trost Richards. Her most famous work is the 1895 novel A New Alice in the Old Wonderland, a pioneering sequel to Lewis Carroll's classic, and she also held a patent for a novel chemical apparatus.

Early life and education

Born in 1835 in Germantown, she was the daughter of Anna Sykes and William Matlack, a successful merchant. The Matlack family was well-established in Philadelphia society and active in Quaker intellectual circles, which valued education for both genders. She received a thorough private education, typical for daughters of affluent families in the Mid-Atlantic states, with an emphasis on literature, languages, and the natural sciences. This early exposure to scientific inquiry, fostered by the American Philosophical Society culture of Philadelphia, laid a foundation for her later interdisciplinary work. Her formative years were spent in the vibrant artistic and scientific community of Germantown, where she developed lifelong interests in poetry and experimental chemistry.

Literary career

Her literary output was diverse, encompassing poetry, children's literature, and satirical fiction. She published poems in periodicals like The Atlantic Monthly and Scribner's Magazine, often exploring themes from nature and domestic life. Her major achievement was the 1895 novel A New Alice in the Old Wonderland, published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., which is considered one of the earliest and most inventive sequels to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In this work, she transported an American Alice back to Wonderland, weaving in contemporary satire and references to then-modern inventions. She also authored other books, including the children's novel The Little Tyrant, and maintained correspondence with literary figures of the Gilded Age, contributing to the cultural milieu of Boston and Philadelphia.

Scientific contributions

Beyond literature, she was a dedicated amateur chemist and inventor, conducting experiments in a home laboratory. Her most tangible scientific contribution was the invention of a "Gas Machine" or "Apparatus for Producing Hydrogen Sulphid," for which she received United States Patent number 470,458 in 1892. This device was designed for educational and laboratory use, generating hydrogen sulfide gas safely for qualitative analysis in chemistry. Her work in this area was supported by the scientific network around the University of Pennsylvania and likely influenced by her son, the future Nobel laureate Theodore William Richards. She presented papers on her chemical research to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, demonstrating a serious engagement with the scientific community of the 19th century that was unusual for women of her era.

Personal life and legacy

In 1856, she married the renowned landscape and marine painter William Trost Richards, with whom she had seven children. The family divided their time between their home in Germantown and Newport, Rhode Island, moving within circles that included artists like John La Farge and scientists from Harvard University. Her son, Theodore William Richards, became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1914, and her daughter Anna Richards Brewster also became a noted painter. She passed away in 1900 in Germantown. Her legacy rests on her unique dual path as a creative writer who contributed to the Alice in Wonderland literary tradition and as an inventive mind who secured a place in the history of American amateur science, bridging the worlds of Victorian literature and American chemical research.

Category:1835 births Category:1900 deaths Category:American women poets Category:American inventors Category:People from Germantown, Philadelphia Category:19th-century American poets