And other stories . . .
1887 Kindergarten chimes: a collection of songs and games composed and arranged for kindergartens and primary schools
1889 The Story Of Patsy
1890 The Story Hour
1890 Timothy’s Quest
1895 Froebel’s Gifts
1895 The Village Watch-Tower
1896 Froebel’s Occupation
1896 Marm Lisa
1896 Kindergarten Principles and Practice
1892 Children’s Rights: A Book of Nursery Logic
1898 Penelope’s Progress
1889 A Summer in a Cañon
1900 Penelope’s English Experiences
1901 Penelope’s Irish Experiences
1901 A Cathedral Courtship
1902 The Diary of a Goose Girl
1902 Golden Numbers
1903 Half-A-Dozen Housekeepers
1904 The Affair at the Inn
1905 Rose O’ The River
1907 Homespun Tales
1907 Magic Casements
1907 New Chronicles Of Rebecca
1907 Pinafore Palace
1908 Tales Of Laughter
1909 The Arabian Nights
1911 A Book Of Dorcas Dishes
1911 Robinetta
1911 The Talking Beasts
1913 The Story Of Waitstill Baxter
1914 Bluebeard
1916 The Romance Of A Christmas Card
1917 Polly Oliver’s Problem
1917 The Writings of Kate Douglas Wiggin
1918 My Books That You Know
1919 Ladies In Waiting
1924 Love By Express
1925 Twilight Stories
(1856-1912) was an author primarily of children’s books, including the well-known Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), based on people, places and events from her childhood in Hollis and Buxton, Maine.
Douglas was born in Philadelphia on September 28, 1859. She attended the Gorham Female Seminary, the Morison Academy (Baltimore), and the Abbott Academy in Andover, Massachusetts from which she graduated in 1878.
Salmon Falls Village Library in Hollis Center (2003)
After her first husband Samuel B. Wiggin died in 1889, she moved back to Hollis where she continued writing. She married George C. Riggs on March 30, 1895. Her house is now the Salmon Falls Village Library.
Her children’s novels include The Birds ‘ Christmas Carol (1887) and Mother Carey’s Chickens (1911).
Her works for adults include a play, The Old Peabody Pew, based on events in Buxton, and her autobiography, My Garden of Memory (1923).
In 1878 she helped establish the first free kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains in San Francisco.
In 1904, Bowdoin College presented her with an honorary degree, the second such degree it had granted to a woman. She later founded the Society of Bowdoin Women.
Wiggin died in Harrow, England on August 24, 1923. [More biography in Hollis article]
Additional resources
Benner, Helen Frances. Kate Douglas Wiggin: Interpreter of Maine Chara cter. (Thesis (M.A.) in English–University of Maine, 1942) [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library, Special Collections]
Smith, Nora Archibald. Kate Douglas Wiggin as Her Sister Knew Her. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1925. (Cambridge: Riverside Press)[University of Southern Maine (Portland), The Albert Brenner Glickman Family Library]
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith. My Garden of Memory: an Autobiography. Boston, New York. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1923.
Waterboro Public Library Maine Writers Index.
George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives at Bowdoin College, especially the Kate Douglas Wiggin collection, 1867-1985, which contains correspondence, journals, book and story manuscripts, commonplace books, notebooks and notes.