BURNHAM, Mrs. Clara Louise

Clara Louise Burnham, born in Newton, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1854, spent her early years in New York City.   However, her family moved to Chicago when Clara Louise was a young girl, and she lived most of her life there.  She was the daughter of Mary Olive Woodman and popular composer George F. Root. Clara Louise, who married Walter Burnham, was a very popular novelist who also penned the lyrics to some of her father's works.

Sometimes known as "Edith Douglas," Clara Louise wrote for Wide Awake early in her career.  Her works also appeared in St. Nicholas and Youth's Companion.

Her early fiction from the 1880s was published by Chicago’s Henry A. Sumner and Company, while her later work was published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company of Boston and New York and by Grosset & Dunlap of New York.  May O. Root, Clara Louise's sister, illustrated her 1884 novel Dearly Bought.

Literary World reviewed eight books by “Edith Douglas,” while Critic, reviewed seven of her works. In addition, Clara Louise's books were noticed in Atheneum (London), Atlantic Monthly, Catholic World, Chautauquan, Dial, New Orleans Daily Picayune, and Overland Monthly.

While she lived in Chicago, Clara Louise spent the summer months at her home, the Moorings, on Bailey Island, Maine.  In 1915, she hosted actor Robert Dempster, her collaborator on an upcoming novel, at the Moorings.

Female screen director Lois Weber adapted Jewel: A Chapter in Her Life, Clara Louise's 1903 Christian Science novel, as the film Jewel in 1915 and later as A Chapter in Her Life in 1923.

In 1926, Clara Louise was one of many women honored at a breakfast during the Woman's World Fair in Chicago.  The next year, she was honored at a dinner by the Society of Midland Authors.

Clara Louise passed away on Monday, June 20, 1927, at the Moorings.  She was buried in Harmony Vale Cemetery, North Reading, Massachusetts.