Additional papers of Grace Ellery Channing, 1884-1976

Author Grace Ellery Channing (also known as Grace Ellery Channing Stetson), was born on December 27, 1862, in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of William Francis Channing and Mary (Tarr) Channing. Her grandfather was William Ellery Channing, the founder of the American Unitarian Church, and her father was an inventor who patented a portable electro-magnetic telegraph, an electric fire alarm, a ship railway, and other inventions. She had a sister, Mary (Channing) Wood (1860-1934), and a brother, Harold Channing (1869-1946). She was educated in private schools and taught in the free kindergarten on Fountain Street in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1885, Channing became ill with what was suspected to be tuberculosis, and moved with her family to Pasadena, California.

Channing began her career as a writer by editing her grandfather's memoirs, Dr. Channing's Notebook (1887). Her earliest essays were published in the periodical Land of Sunshine (later Outwest). Following a visit to Italy from 1890 to 1893, Channing wrote articles including, "What lessons Rome can teach us" and "Florence of the English poets," which described Italy for the American audience. Many of her stories appeared in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Saturday Evening Post. She published two collections of short stories, The Sister of a Saint (1895) and The Fortune of a Day (1900), as well as a collection of poems, Sea Drift, (1899).

Channing was a close friend of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and wrote and produced several successful plays with her. In June 1894, Channing married Gilman's ex-husband, Charles Walter Stetson, a painter, and together the couple raised Stetson and Gilman's daughter, Katharine Beecher Stetson Chamberlin. The family lived in Pasadena, California, and Boston, Massachusetts, before moving to Rome, Italy, in 1902. Stetson died on July 20, 1911, on the eve of his return to the United States for a major exhibition, from complications after intestinal surgery. Channing returned to the United States in 1912 and organized an extended touring exhibition of Stetson's paintings that was shown in Boston, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and Toledo, Ohio.

In 1916, Channing was accredited as a war correspondent and traveled to France and the Italian front. From 1918 to 1937 she lived in New York, and became increasingly concerned about debts, low income, and her poor health. She died on April 3, l937.