Lurana W. Sheldon (after marriage, Ferris; pen names, Richard Hackstaff, Stanley Norris, Grace Shirley; April 11, 1862 – June 11, 1945) was an American author of novels, poems, and short stories, as well as a newspaper editor. Her published work amounted to over one million words. She claimed to have earned her living in fifteen different and totally dissimilar lines of business, including bookkeeping, business management, journalism, work in a chemical laboratory, buying dry goods, and writing stories. She was a suffrage activist, and she opposed prohibition.
Sheldon was the first poet in the United States to use her talents for the birth control movement. So many of Sheldon's poems appeared on the editorial page of The New York Times that her name became closely associated with that paper. She is also remembered for her "Marion Marlowe" dime novel series including My Queen, which was an exception to the romance stories of the day where the heroine married at the end of the novel, leaving no compelling reason to write a sequel.
A medical education, coupled with opportunity for wide observation of the poor, gave Sheldon knowledge along sociological lines. One of her achievements was a sociological lecture in verse, entitled "The Alien," which was heard in New York and elsewhere in 1915. One poem of this lecture, "The Night Court," was widely read and copied. Sheldon was the author of several novels and serial stories, many short stories and special articles, and more than one thousand poems, the latter having appeared in nearly every magazine and paper of prominence in the U.S. For many years, she also wrote a large number of the unsigned verses. Though without funds at the beginning of her career, she met every expense that she ever incurred without once asking for an "extension of time" or credit.
Early years and education
Lurana Waterhouse Sheldon was born April 11, 1862, at Hadlyme, Connecticut, the daughter of Asa Sheldon and Christiana F. (Waterhouse) Sheldon. She was of New England origin, her mother being a descendant of early Cape Cod settlers and her father the great grandchild of Jonathan Edwards, an eminent divine of the eighteenth century.
Sheldon received the best education that a public and private school could give her. In the fall of 1882, she matriculated with the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary. During her first year in college, Sheldon boarded at the New York Bible and Fruit Mission, and in her visits with that organization to Blackwells Island, Harts Island, Wards Island, and others, where the cities' paupers, lunatics, imbeciles, incurables and convicts were quartered, she saw enough to convince her that no such being as a God could exist and that the question of existence had only a physical basis. After spending six years in the study and practice of medicine, she was obliged to abandon it because of threatened nervous prostration.
Career
Medicine
Sheldon spent two years at the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary, and nearly seven years in hospitals, helping the physicians in many ways. Concerning her work in the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane, Dr. James M. Kenniston wrote about her in the Portland Express-Advertiser, the largest paper in Maine:—
Writing
Sheldon started earning her own living at the age of seventeen. She began writing verses at the age of ten years, but it was not until she was twenty-five that she placed a monetary value upon her written work. From that time, she began filling in odd hours with her writing. Like many another prominent authors of her day, Sheldon's first successes were made through the columns of the New York Mercury. Sheldon's poem entitled "The Medical Student's Dream," together with some prose work, was requested for the exhibit of New York State literature by the Board of Managers at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
By 1900, her published stories amounted to over two hundred and her humorous verses were known to every editor of a Sunday newspaper and pictorial weekly in the United States. From 1900–02, she worked under contract with one of the large publishing houses of New York City. In one year alone (1900), Sheldon's published work amounted to over one million words, and not a week passed without a story from her pen appearing upon the bookstands. In 1901, Sheldon spent six months at Saratoga Springs, New York before returning to New York City, having benefitted by the change of air and long-continued rest.