Lillian Whiting
American Journalist and Writer
Lilian Whiting (1847–1942) was born in upstate New York in 1847, to parents who both were descended from clerics (on her father's side, she could claim relation to Cotton Mather). When she was still a baby, the family moved to rural northern Illinois, where her ex-schoolteacher father became a farmer and later a leading Republican member of the state legislature.
Whiting was educated at home by her parents and by private tutors. The family was evidently well read and bookish, and Whiting showed her interest in writing from an early age. Her first job in this field was as editor of the Tiskilwa, Illinois, newspaper, Tiskilwa being the town closest to the Whiting family farm.
Besides her outpouring of journalism, Whiting also wrote and published essays and poetry. One of her most popular books was the three-volume The World Beautiful (1894–96), a detailing of her comfortingly optimistic spiritual philosophy which ran to 14 editions.
Her poems, collected in From Dreamland Sent (1895), were of a similar nature, and were praised by such contemporaries and friends as Julia Ward Howe, Margaret Deland and Mary A. Livermore . In 1895, Whiting had a vision which apparently instructed her to go to Italy, a trip that led her to write A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1899), about the expatriate British poet.
She traveled to Europe every year thereafter, and wrote many travel books based on her experiences in different cities abroad. Her companion Kate Field had died in 1896, and in tribute to her late friend she published After Her Death (1897) and Kate Field (1899).
Whiting had psychic experiences after Field's death, leading her increasingly toward a mystical construction of the world. She published a book called The Spiritual Significance in 1900, and contributed regularly to the National Spiritualist magazine. After the turn of the 20th century she also advocated for women's suffrage and sought solace in numerous religious sects, becoming interested particularly in the Bahai faith and in Theosophy.
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