Mary Ellen Chase

Mary Ellen Chase – Life, Career, and Memorable Words

Mary Ellen Chase (1887–1973) was an American educator, novelist, essayist, and scholar. Learn about her life in Maine, her teaching at Smith College, her major works like Mary Peters and Windswept, and her enduring reflections on reading, place, and imagination.

Introduction

Mary Ellen Chase was a towering figure in New England letters during the mid-20th century. Her rooted sense of place, her commitment to teaching, and her prolific output in fiction, autobiography, essays, and scholarship have made her a beloved voice in regional literature and American letters more broadly. Through novels set on the Maine coast, evocative essays about childhood and nature, and decades in the classroom, Chase left a legacy of literary integrity, mentorship, and affection for the small and particular.

Early Life and Family

Mary Ellen Chase was born on February 24, 1887 in Blue Hill, Maine.

As a child, she was encouraged to read and play word games. Sarah Orne Jewett, a significant influence in Maine’s literary tradition; Jewett’s encouragement later resonated for Chase. Growing up in the natural and coastal environment of Maine, Chase absorbed the rhythms of land, sea, and seasonal cycles — elements that would become central in her work.

Youth, Education & Formative Years

Chase attended Blue Hill Academy and local schools before enrolling in higher education. 1909, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maine in Orono.

After her undergraduate studies, she taught in rural and small settings: a one-room school in Buck’s Harbor, Maine; a coeducational boarding school in Chicago; public schools in Montana.

In 1918, she began graduate work at the University of Minnesota, earning an M.A. and later her Ph.D. in English in 1922.

Chase’s early trajectory combined teaching and writing; even before her Ph.D., she published children’s stories, essays, and fiction.

Career & Achievements

Academic Career & Teaching

In 1926, Chase joined the faculty of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. 1955.

Chase valued teaching perhaps even more than her writing. On the Smith campus she became known for her warmth, her intellectual generosity, and her influence on students.

Literary Work & Themes

Chase was a prolific writer — over 30 books in various genres (novels, essays, autobiographies, Biblical studies, criticism).

Some of her most noted works:

• A Goodly Heritage (1932) — autobiography of her childhood.

• A Goodly Fellowship (1939) — about her development and calling as a teacher.

• Mary Peters (1934) — one of her best-known novels, set in coastal Maine, about a young woman reinventing life.

• Silas Crockett (1935) — another Maine novel of seafaring families, with struggles and faith.

• Windswept (1941) — set in Maine, capturing place, memory, and home; one of her more popular books.

• The Edge of Darkness (1957) — another novel in her Maine canon.

In addition to fiction and memoir, she wrote essays, criticism, and religious or biblical-inspired works (e.g. The Bible and the Common Reader).

Her style is often measured, evocative, attentive — she believed deeply in the potency of place, memory, and intimate images. Critics often group her among New England regional authors for her rootedness and her sense of community and moral consciousness.

Honors & Legacy

• In 1956, she was awarded the Constance Lindsay Skinner Award by the Women’s National Book Association in recognition of her contributions.

• She received honorary degrees from multiple institutions: University of Maine, Bowdoin College, Colby College, Smith College, Northeastern University.

• Her summer home “Windswept” in Steuben, Maine (where she lived summers between 1941 and 1955) later inspired her writing and was preserved as a historic place.

• Her personal papers, manuscripts, scrapbooks, and correspondence are housed at Smith College and in Maine archival collections.

Though not always a household name, Chase’s influence persisted through her students (some became significant writers), through her devotion to place in literature, and through her commitment to balancing scholarship, teaching, and creativity.

Historical & Cultural Context

Chase’s career unfolded in a period when American letters were negotiating modernism, regionalism, and changing social expectations for women. She occupied the space of a female academic and writer in times when those roles were still constrained. Her Maine roots placed her within the school of regionalism that prized local landscapes, small communities, and interior lives, even as literary trends moved toward urban settings and abstraction.

At Smith College, she taught during decades when women’s colleges were centers of intellectual life for women, and she contributed to an environment that supported women writers and scholars. Her dual commitments — to place-based storytelling and rigorous education — offered a model of literary life rooted in both the local and the universal.

Personality & Talents

Chase was known for her warm presence, her enthusiasm for students, and her belief in the teacher’s personality as integral to learning.

She maintained a deep curiosity into languages and the Bible, studied Hebrew to engage the Old Testament directly, and traveled in England for study and renewal.

Her writing temperament favored quiet revelation: subtle turns of imagery, moral questions, and the interior life. Her strongest setting was the rocky Maine coast, and she had a gift for evoking elemental nature — wind, sea, sky, seasons — without oversentimentality.

Selected Quotes by Mary Ellen Chase

Here are a few memorable lines attributed to Chase, drawn from her essays and reprinted in collections:

“Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.” “There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.” “It is quite possible to leave your home for a walk in the early morning air and return a different person – beguiled, enchanted.”

These lines illustrate her view of reading, wonder, and the transformative power of daily experience.

Lessons from Mary Ellen Chase

1. Root art in place. Chase shows how local landscapes and childhood geographies can offer universal resonance.

2. Balance teaching and creation. She pursued both vocations with dedication, believing that teaching and writing can reinforce one another.

3. Cultivate humility and generosity. Her influence as a teacher came not from authority alone but from warmth, encouragement, and integrity.

4. Listen to inner life. Her attention to memory, imagination, and quiet moments invites writers to look inward.

5. Sustain the long work. Over decades, she produced in multiple genres; her life affirms that literary life is a marathon more than a sprint.

Conclusion

Mary Ellen Chase’s life bridged the coastlines of Maine and the halls of Smith College; she wrote with affection for small towns, salt air, growing children, moral reflection, and the quiet enchantments of everyday landscapes. While she may not always appear in mainstream literary histories, her work offers a richly grounded example of how regional voice, intellectual rigor, and deep care for readers and students can intertwine.