page_title: Mary Louise Booth
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Louise Booth / Early career
caption_attribution_description: English: 1859 History of the City of New York
context_page_description: Mary Louise Booth was an American editor, translator and writer. She was the first editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar.
  At the age of 18, Booth left the family home for New York City and learned the trade of a vest-maker. She devoted her evenings to study and to writing. She contributed tales and sketches to various newspapers and magazines, but was not paid for them. She began to do reporting and book-reviewing for educational and literary journals, still without any pay in money, but happy at being occasionally paid in books. She said: "It is my college, and I must learn my business before I can demand pay."
  As time went on, she received more and more literary work to do. She widened her circle of friends to those who were beginning to appreciate her abilities. In 1859, she agreed to write a history of New York, but even then, she was unable to support herself wholly, although she had given up vest-making and was writing 12 hours a day. When she was 30 years old, she accepted the position of amanuensis to Dr. J. Marion Sims, and this was the first work of the kind for which she received steady payment.
context_section_description: A friend who was a vest-maker offered to teach her the trade, and to help her to get work, and this enabled her to carry out her plan of going to New York. She took a small room in the city, and went home only for Sundays, as the communication between Williamsburg and New York was very slow in those days, and the journey could not be made in less than three hours. Two rooms were always kept ready for her in her parents' house. But her family felt so little sympathy in her literary work that she rarely mentioned it at home.
  Booth wrote tales and sketches for newspapers and magazines. She translated from the French The Marble-Worker's Manual (New York, 1856) and The Clock and Watch Maker's Manual. She translated Joseph Méry's André Chénier and Edmond François Valentin About's The King of the Mountains for Emerson's Magazine, which also published her own original articles.  Booth next translated Victor Cousin's Secret History of the French Court: or, Life and Times of Madame de Chevreuse (1859). That same year, the first edition of her History of the City of New York appeared, which was the result of great research. It was her prized possession. Next she assisted Orlando Williams Wight in making a series of translations of the French classics, and she also translated About's Germaine (Boston, 1860).
  Booth was still scarcely more than a young girl when a friend suggested to her that no complete history of the city of New York had ever been written, and that it might be well to prepare such a one for the use of schools. Although without ambition to attempt the impossible, she began the undertaking, and, after some years finished a draft that, on the request of a publisher, became the basis of a more important work upon the same subject. During the course of her work, Booth had full access to libraries and archives. Washington Irving sent her a letter of cordial encouragement, and D. T. Valentine, Henry B. Dawson, William John Davis, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, and numerous others provided her with documents and assistance. "My Dear Miss Booth," wrote Benson John Lossing, "the citizens of New York owe you a debt of gratitude for this popular story of the life of the great metropolis, containing so many important facts in its history, and included in one volume accessible to all. I congratulate you on the completeness of the task and the admirable manner in which it has been performed." The history appeared in one large volume. It was so well-received that the publisher proposed to Booth to go abroad and write popular histories of the great European capitals, London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Though the future appeared bright for the young writer, the approach of the civil war and other circumstances prevented her travel.
caption: History of the City of New York 1859 by Mary Louise Booth
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