This last weekend, I blogged about an American author named Elizabeth Phipps Train. She had gained acclaim in the late 1800s, but apparently started avoiding the limelight around the turn of the century. I was hoping to confirm her date of death, and this morning, I am able to do that. As suspected, it was indeed 1940.
Here’s Train’s obituary, published in the July 18, 1940, issue of The Brookline Chronicle:
The address — 50 Goddard Avenue, Brookline — matches the 1940 census, which has Train living with her sister, Hannah P. Weld, née Train. So why that last line: “There are no immediate survivors”? In fact, Weld’s 1943 obituary mentions another living sister.
And why no mention in Train’s obituary of her having once been a noted author, one who had penned well-received novels and short stories? In my research, I came upon a celebrity sighting (yes, a “Train spotting”) notice published in 1926. She had been staying at the Ritz Carlton in Atlantic City, and the fact was considered newsworthy. This shows Train’s accomplishments as an author were still recognized as late as the mid-1920s. Had her shining star become extinguished just 14 years later?
I have no answers. But I do have abundant gratitude for Kelly Keener, whose expertise in and devotion to preserving the history of literary figures led to her locating this obituary and to her editing Tales, Sketches, & Poems of Charles Fenno Hoffman. My earlier post about Train is here.
— Tim
(Posts identified as “The Scarlet Pencil” chronicle my meandering through the misty and mysterious quagmire of editing books.)
BROM BONES BOOKS 