Eliza Lanesford Cushing

Who was Eliza Lanesford Cushing?

Eliza Lanesford Cushing was an American-Canadian dramatist, short story writer, and editor. The daughter of Hannah Webster Foster and sister of Harriet Vaughan Cheney, both novelists, she wrote a number of plays including Esther and The Fatal Ring, and edited the Literary Garland, Canada's main literary periodical.

Cushing was born in Brighton, Massachusetts, and published two early novels in Boston. In 1828, she married Canadian doctor Frederick Cushing, and in 1833 moved to Montreal with him. Her sister Harriet had also married a Canadian and moved to Montreal, and the two regularly contributed stories and poems to the Literary Garland, Cushing publishing under her initials "E.L.C." Cushing also continued publishing in the United States, with short stories and plays appearing in the Philadelphia-based Godey's Lady's Book. Cushing's husband died in 1846 of typhus contracted from immigrants he was treating; Cheney's husband had died in 1845, and in 1847 the two sisters founded the Snow-Drop, a monthly girls' magazine "primarily concerned with social roles and domestic responsibilities appropriate for young women."