| Notes |
- Internet Folio Database (Original Source Unknown)
Sara Ware Bassett, author, daughter of Charles Warren and Anna Augusta
(Haley) Bassett, was born in Newton, Massachusetts. Her father was a
descendant of William Bassett who came from England to Plymouth in the Fortune
in 1621 through his fifth son, Joseph, who settled in Braintree, Massachusetts. Miss
Bassett was educated in the public schools of Newton and in 1894 graduated from the
Lowell School of Applied Design, then a branch of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. She received a diploma of honorable mention for designs sent with the
latter's exhibit to the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893. Unwilling to accept a designer's
position away from home, she turned to teaching and graduated from the Symond's
Kindergarten Training School in 1902. Thereafter for twenty years she held a position
in the Newton public schools. As English had been her favorite study in high school,
she wished to continue this subject, and at once arranged for courses in her spare
time at Boston University, where she studied for four years with Professor E.
Charlton Black. She constantly practiced writing, at first for the mere love
of arranging words, as she had previously arranged colors in her studies in
design. She sold some short stories and contributed unsigned articles to the
Youth's Companion. Self criticism led her to further courses with Professor
Charles T. Copeland and Mr. Frank W.C. Hersey at Radcliffe College, where she
studied also philosophy under Professors Royce and Palmer. She then returned
to Boston University for three year's work under Professor Dalls Lore Sharp.
"To those faithful plots who have guided me upon my course" she dedicated her
first novel, The Taming of Zenas Henry, an affectionate study of Cape Code
life, published in 1915. She had been in the habit of spending her summers on
the Cape and had recognized that, while there were many stories that should be
preserved for their local color, other writers had frequently misrepresented
the true character of the people. In 1917 followed The Wayfarers at the Angels
and in 1919 The Harbor Road. In these books she shows a delicate humor, set
off by a delightful irony that does not disguise her complete and friendly
understanding of a cordial, generous, and humorous people. Miss Bassett's long
experience as a kindergarten teacher has given her a comprehension of
childhood which is reflected in the books she has especially written for young
people: The Story of Lumber (1912), The Story of Wood (1913), The Story of
Leather (1915), The Story of Glass (1916), Ths Story of Sugar (1917), T
Story of Silk (1918), and The Story of Porcelain (1919). In these she h
traced in entertaining style the various stages taken in transforming t
commodity into the finished product. Miss Bassett is a member of the Boston
Women's Club and the Boston Author's Club, and an honorary member of the
Boston Manuscript Club.
Who Was Who, Volume V 1969-1973
Bassett, Sara Ware, author; b. Newton, Mass., Oct. 22, 1872; d.
Charles Warren and Anna Augusta (Haley) Bassett; of Pilgrim descent; grad.
Lowell Sch. of Design, 1894; grad. Symonds Kindergarten Tr. Sch., Bosto
1897; studied Boston U., Radcliffe Coll. Kindergarten teacher public schs.,
Newton, 1897-1917. Congregationalist. Clubs: Author's, Boston Manuscript
(hon.), Woman's City Club (Boston). Author: Silver Moon Cottage, 1945; The
Beacon, 1946; Head Winds, 1947; Within The Harbor, 1948; The White Sail, 1949;
Echoes of The Tide, 1951; Beyond the Breakers, 1952; The Whispering Pin
1953; Adrift, 1954; The Girl in the Blue Pinafore, 1957. Home: 56 West Cedar
St., Boston, MA.
Current Biography, 1956
Sarah Ware Bassett, Author
On April 15, 1955 the Boston Authors' Club honored Sara Ware Bassett,
one of its most loyal and active members, on the publication of her fiftieth
book. For more than forty years Miss Bassett has written her pleasant novels
of New England life. At eighty-four she is busily at work on a new novel
scheduled for publication in 1957. A small and fragile-looking lady who has
lived all her life in Massachusetts, Miss Bassett shuns publicity. "I prefer
to be represented by my work," she writes, "I love my writing. It is my boon
companion."
A descendant of William Bassett who came to Plymouth, Massachusetts on
the Fortune in 1621 and joined the Pilgrims' colony, Sara Ware Bassett was
born in Newton, Massachusetts, October 22, 1872, to Charles Warren and Anna
Augusta (Haley) Bassett. She spent her childhood and early girlhood in Newton,
studying in the Newton public schools and graduating from the Newton Hi
School in 1892. In the same year she entered the Lowell School of Design, then
a part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where she
completed a program in textile design. She never worked professionally in the
field, however. In 1894 she decided to become a kindergarten teacher, a
after five years of study at the Symonds Kindergarten Training School in
Boston, she obtained a position in the Newton public schools which she held
from 1897 to 1917.
With a teaching schedule of a little more than two hours a day, Miss
Bassett had time to continue her studies in the three fields which interested
her most - English, psychology, and philosophy. She took courses at Radcliffe
College in Cambridge under such distinguished professors as Charles T.
Copeland ("Copey"), Josiah Royce, and George Herbert Paomer. She also studied
at Boston University under Dallas Lore Sharp. Miss Bassett had by this time
resolved to become a writer, but, as she explains, "I was ill satisfied with
my work and was determined to learn how to 'handle my tools'
Encouraged by all her teachers, but especially by Professor Charp, she
began her first novel, and this was published in 1915 by George H. Doran under
the The Taming of Zenas Henry (made into a silent motion picture by RKO). In
the forty years since this time, Miss Bassett has published thirty novels, her
latest To Each His Dream in 1955 (Doubleday). She has also written a number of
books for children: a group in the Industrial Book series for the Penn
Publishing Company from 1912 to 1920 (The Story of Lumber, The Story of Wool,
The Story of Glass, etc.); another group for the Invention Series published by
Little, Brown from 1920 to 1926 (Paul and the Printing Press, Steve and the
Steam Engine, etc.); and again for Penn in 1926 to 1927 two volumes in the
Discovery Series, The Story of Columbus, The Story of Vasco da Gama. Wi
George L. Shuman she wrote Industries of the World (1914) and with E.T. Holmes
A Wonderful Fifty Years (1917, privately printed).
Most of Miss Bassett's novels are set on Cape Cod, Massachusetts where
(except for two trips to England and the Continent) she has spent all h
summers since she was in her teens. "I have sought to put into my novels its
atmosphere, the fragrance of its pines, the blueness of its sea, the emerald
of its salt marshes. I have also tried to present sincerely the humor of the
Cape Codder, his common sense, his sterling qualities."
Reviewers have generally agreed that Miss Bassett has succeeded in
this intention. Her novels, Lisle Bell remarked in the New York Herald Tribune
in 1943, are "wholesome and folksy, touched with native humor and the spirit
of neighborliness." In a review of her novel Heart's Haven (Doubleday, 1944),
the New York Times (July 9, 1944) commented: "Widely known for the flavor of
authenticity she brings to her stories by right of heritage, the author is at
her best when describing the natives of the small village of Belleport and
letting you listen in on their gossip and salty philosophizing
It is not Miss Bassett's purpose to portray the grimmer aspects of the
modern world nor to explore in depth the complexities of human life. On the
eve of World War II, the Saturday Review of Literature (July 1, 1939)
complained that her novel A Son of the Sea (Doubleday, 1939) with "its absence
of contemporary insecurity, tenseness, and quickness, belongs in those great
days of the Atlantic Monthly which preceded the Civil War. It was designed for
that saintly white-haired grandmother who in advertisements is all day sitting
and knitting and dreaming; it is tender, conventional, and unreal as she is."
To the large public that seeks escape in pleasant romantic fiction, however,
Miss Bassett's novels, soundly based as they are in the spirit and flavor of
rural and small town New England life, remain sturdy favorite
Miss Bassett does all her writing at the Boston Athenaeum (of which
she is a proprietor) where she is free from the interruptions of telephone
calls and visitors. She lives with her sister, a retired physician, in an old
house on Beacon Hill in Boston. Her favorite recreations are "a good book, a
good play, good music." She rarely listens to the radio and has never watched
television. She is proud of her strong family tradition ("although we have
traveled, our family have never lived outside Massachusetts since 1621") and
states her convictions simply but firmly: "I stand for what is clean, decent,
and upholds our religious and moral standards."
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Bassett Family Association Database
1872 - Deceased