Woman of the Century/Mabel Loomis Todd

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2295003Woman of the Century — Mabel Loomis Todd

TODD, Mrs. Mabel Loomis, author, born in Cambridge, Mass., 10th November, 1858. She is MABEL LOOMIS TODD. the daughter of the poet and astronomer. Prof. E. J. Loomis, and his wife Mary Alden Wilder Loomis, in the seventh generation of descent from John Alden and his wife Priscilla. Mabel was a precocious child. At the age of five she was laboriously printing her first blood-curdling novel, and singing airs. Her father taught her during the first ten years of her life. In 1868 the office of the "Nautical Almanac" was removed to Washington, D. C, and Professor Loomis moved his family to that city. Mabel entered the Georgetown Seminary, and studied botany and ornithology with her father, until she was seventeen. In 1875 she went to Boston to study music and painting, and became proficient in both. In 1879 she became the wife of professor Todd, professor of astronomy and director of the observatory of Amherst, Mass., and after marriage she continued her studies in art and music In 1882 her interest in astronomy was aroused, and she made an exhaustive study of the science. In 1887 she accompanied her husband, who had charge of the expedition to Japan to observe the total eclipse of the sun, and she gave him much valuable assistance. To her was intrusted the drawing of the filmy corona. She wrote accounts of the expedition for the New York "Nation," and contributed articles on Japan to "St. Nicholas," the "Century" and other magazines. In 1889 she rendered valuable aid in preparation for her husband's expedition to western Africa to observe a total solar eclipse. In 1890 she edited and arranged for publication the poems left by the late Emily Dickinson, the first volume of which passed through a dozen editions in less than a year. In 1891 she prepared a second volume of Miss Dickinson's poems, to which she contributed a preface. Recently she has given drawing-room talks on the life and literary work of that remarkable woman, as well as upon Japan and other subjects. She does a good deal of book reviewing for periodicals, as well as occasional sketches and short stories. She is interested in all work for woman. Her home is in Amherst She has one daughter, aged ten years.