“It is the job of the biographer to capture not just the facts, but the person—to recreate a life that breathes.”

–Richard Holmes (b. 1945. British biographer and literary historian, best known for revolutionizing the art of biography by blending rigorous research with narrative grace. Holmes treats biography as “a pursuit”—a physical and emotional journey that mirrors the subject’s life and traces the biographer’s own evolving understanding.)

Last week, I had the honor of speaking to the Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Society—an international gathering of scholars and fellow literary sleuths—about a woman who has occupied both my imagination and my file drawers for over fifty years. The event was titled An Hour with Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Brent L. Kendrick, though truth be told, Freeman took up more than her share of the hour—quite the feat for someone 95 years late to the party.

My talk focused on the biographer’s challenge—specifically, the one I’ve taken on in my newest work-in-progress: Dolly: Life and Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, a two-volume biography that attempts not just to recount her life but also to reckon with it. And as I spoke, I realized: you, my Dear Readers, might want to know the thrust of those challenges too.

Besides, if the rocks on the mountain above me ever come tumbling down around my head—and let’s be honest, erosion is undefeated—I’d like to think I’ve left behind notes coherent enough for some poor soul to pick up the thread and carry on. Consider this a digital trail of sourdough breadcrumbs. Or a literary will. Or maybe just a slightly compulsive footnote to posterity.

Let’s began with where I began my conversation with the Society! To my surprise–well, not really–I departed from my prepared PowerPoint presentation and shared with everyone some of my recent finds. Not all. Just a few. Like some first editions of her books that survive with dust jackets intact: Doc Gordon (1906) and An Alabaster Box, co-authored with Florence Morse Kingsley (1917).

Then I had to share a copy of her Pembroke with an 1894 letter tipped in, expressing her surprise to learn of a Pembroke, New Hampshire and insisting that the Pembroke in her novel was an imaginary town.

I could have gone on and on, but I had to get started with my prepared PowerPoint. Even so, I was dying to share one of my most treasured finds in recent years: an association copy of her Jane Field (1892) from the library of Thomas Hardy, no less. It even has his book plate! And get this! Tipped into the book is a letter from Freeman to Hardy, written in 1894 when she was still Mary E. Wilkins.

I had to share those items because discoveries like that make research truly enjoyable.

After that gem, I decided to begin my formal presentation, so I started with silence. No. No. Not her Silence and Other Stories (1898) that I had included in my show-and-tell of her books with dust jackets.

And I wasn’t talking about the peaceful kind of silence. I had in mind the charged, maddening kind that suggests everything while saying nothing. My work on Freeman’s is a study in absences. No children. No will. No literary executor. No neat stack of labeled folders tucked away in a special collections box. Just scattered letters—some stiff and formal, others intimate and tender, many conspicuously missing. A few were destroyed by well-meaning friends who, bless them, thought privacy more valuable than posterity. That’s loyalty with scissors.

And yet, what’s missing speaks volumes. Silence, when it’s deliberate, isn’t absence—it’s presence with its mouth closed. It points to pain, privacy, or power. It challenges the biographer to resist the urge to fill in gaps with imagination. Biography isn’t fiction. And Freeman, who lived within boundaries, both imposed and self-constructed, deserves to have her story told with respect for what she chose not to share.

I used to think my job was to uncover. But every time I held her letters—some brittle, some bold, many barely surviving—I understood something deeper. My job was to listen. Not for revelations, but for nuance. I hoped the silences might eventually yield confessions. What I found instead was the eloquence of restraint.

And that restraint continues through the patchwork of what remains. What I’m working with wasn’t curated; it was cobbled together from libraries, estates, eBay listings, obscure auctions, and—on more than one occasion—serendipity. A letter here. A scribbled marginal note there. A donation from someone who thought, “This might be of interest.” And indeed, it was.

From this mosaic, one truth stood out: Freeman was no literary waif wandering the fields of New England and New Jersey with a bonnet full of feelings. She was sharp. Strategic. A woman who tracked her payments, negotiated contracts, and protected her work with steely precision. She didn’t just write to be heard—she wrote to be paid. And she succeeded.

But there were ways in which she was silenced, or at least reframed. Take her first collection of stories for adults, for example. The world knows it as A Humble Romance, but that was not her title. She wanted Green Mountain Stories. One editorial misstep reshaped her critical reception for generations. In an attempt to set the record straight, I published the collection in 2023 under the title she originally intended. It wasn’t just an act of publishing—it was an act of restoration. A reclamation. A literary correction served warm.

Place shaped her profoundly. Born in Massachusetts, forged in Vermont, and, by her own reluctant admission, tethered to New Jersey. Who claims her? Each state might try, but perhaps none can fully. Those Vermont years were transformative—not just scenic. She didn’t merely write about place; she grew into herself there. Critics, of course, pinned her as “local color,” as though geography were quaint decoration instead of animating force.

At one point, I thought I could simply revise my earlier book, The Infant Sphinx. Dust off a few facts, plug in a few letters, call it an update. My Dear Readers, I could not. With over 587 pages already in print and decades of new discoveries, it became clear: this wasn’t a renovation. This was a whole new house.

I decided to start from the ground up. Volume I: The New England Years (1852–1901) tracks her ascent—her voice, her control, her deliberate rise. Volume II: The New Jersey Years (1902–1930) explores unraveling and resilience. Her husband’s alcoholism, his institutionalization, his escape, his death, and his final legacy: disinheriting her in favor of his chauffeur. But those years also brought triumph. Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Gold Medal. She was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She endured—and she flourished.

As I worked, she shifted in my mind from “The Infant Sphinx” to something more intimate. Her friends called her “Dolly.” So do I. Because what emerged wasn’t a mask, but a woman: shrewd, vulnerable, funny, driven. Someone who resisted easy summary. Someone who might have written my biography better than I’ll ever write hers.

Of course, none of this would’ve been possible in 1985. Back then, research meant microfilm, train stations, and airports. Now, it means auction alerts, digital archives, and collectors who drop treasures into my inbox. I’ve found letters in university databases, estate catalogs, and the odd footnote in a forgotten article. The crowd, the cloud, and the collector—they’ve all joined the project. I don’t always have to go to the archive anymore. Sometimes, the archive comes to me.

In some ways, I’ve spent my whole career waiting for this moment. Waiting for the tools to catch up to the mystery. Waiting for the materials to surface. Waiting for my own understanding to mature.

That’s why Dolly had to happen now.

And apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so. What began as a one-time Zoom talk has unexpectedly grown legs—and possibly a handbag. To my surprise and delight, the talk was a hit. I’ve been invited to give it again on June 27, and word keeps trickling in. Emails from those who missed it have arrived, each bearing some variation of “Please tell me it was recorded.”

Hannah Champion, President of the Freeman Society and Assistant Professor of Nineteenth-Century American Literature at Université Bordeaux Montaigne, has asked me to do a formal recording for the Society’s blog. Apparently, I’m more popular than I realized—or perhaps Mary is, and I’m just her current mouthpiece with a sometimes-decent Wi-Fi signal and a fondness for dust-jacket ephemera.

However that may be, one thing is certain: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman isn’t just a name on a title page or a portrait in an outdated textbook. She’s a presence. One I’ve come to know. One I hope you’ll come to know, too.

And if the mountain above me holds steady a while longer, I’ll finish her story—not as I once imagined it, but exactly as Dolly now insists on having it told.