The Journal and Letters of the Little Locksmith

By: Katherine Butler Hathaway

Katharine Butler Hathaway (1890-1942) was born in Baltimore and lived for much of her youth in Salem, Massachusetts. She suffered from spinal tuberculosis, and though she was strapped to a board for 10 years in an effort to cure her deformed spine, she remained physically crippled, though mobile, throughout her life. After attending Radcliffe College, she lived and wrote in Maine (buying a house in Castine in 1921), and later in New York City and Paris, where she was a part of the vibrant artists' culture of the 1920s. In the early 1930s she returned to settle on the coast of Maine with her husband, Daniel Hathaway. The Little Locksmith, which she called her "bread and butter letter to God " and which details both her suffering and her triumphant spirit, was published a year after her death (1943/2000). The Little Locksmith was chosen by NPR's Fresh Air Book Critic Maureen Corrigan as one of her six Best Books in 2000. In 1946 a collection of her writings and drawings was published as The Journals and Letters of the Little Locksmith. This book is composed of the unfinished manuscripts, letters, journals, and notes which she left, including letters to Catharine Sargent Huntington (1887-1987).

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000KBDODY
• Release Date: January 1943
• Publisher: Coward-McCann