Susan Coolidge

• Biography

  Susan Coolidge was the pen name of Sarah Chauncy Woolsey (1835–1905). Born in Ohio, she served as a nurse during the Civil War and after that turned to writing. When her first book, A New Year’s Bargain, was published in 1871, her editor, who was also the editor for Louisa May Alcott, suggested that Susan Coolidge try her hand at the same kind of story as Alcott’s. What followed were five books about the irrepressible Katy Carr and the fortunes and misfortunes of the Carr family, characters based on members of Coolidge’s own family.

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• Praise for Books

  “Katy goes to Europe and is so fortunate as to enjoy the novelties and beauties which she sees, with ideal enthusiasm. Somehow, despite the familiarity of the ground, the story does not lack interest and freshness. The book is bright, sensible, and entertaining.” —Nation

  “For children of the right age and temperament, Katy’s interior journey will continue to exert the fascination it has held for so many over the last 140 years.” —Guardian (London)

  “The freshness of spirit, charm of style, warm sympathy with and large knowledge of childhood, which have characterized all Susan Coolidge’s stories for young readers reappear in [What Katy Did Next].” —Book News

  “Not even Miss Alcott apprehends child nature with finer sympathy, or pictures its nobler traits with more skill.” —Boston Daily Advertiser, 1899

  “Susan Coolidge’s books need no commending; they are as tempting as they are sweet and pure; she knows how to make attractive everything she touches; and good literature, good English, does not suffer at her hands, while the refinement of tone and moral fiber are all that could be desired.” —Literary World

  “Susan Coolidge has always possessed the affection of her young readers, for it seems as if she had the happy instinct of planning stories that each girl would like to act out in reality.” — The Critic, 1899

  “Written in Miss Coolidge’s usual bright style…the characters are well drawn and the tone as high as its predecessors.” —Churchman

  “This is the moral side of the story; but its great charm to the little people will lie in the graphic picture of the life of Katy and her five brothers and sisters, before Katy’s accident took place. Not even Miss Alcott herself could have given more vivid pictures of children’s good times and sad scrapes than are in the first half of this story.” —Century Magazine, 1873

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  • What Katy Did Next

  • By Susan Coolidge

    Read by Susan O’Malley

  • Release Date: 1/01/00

  • Formats: Digital Audy

  Katy was the sort of girl who might do anything next, so long as it was something exciting! At twenty-one, she was as eager for adventure as ever, and what greater adventure could there be for an American girl than a trip to Europe? Watching a Punch-and-Judy show in London…driving down the Champs-Élysées in Paris…on to the Riviera and the picture-postcard blue of the Mediterranean…on again to Italy, Naples, Rome, Florence and, at last, to Venice and into a gondola on the Grand Canal, with a handsome young naval officer who—ah, but that would be telling!

  • What Katy Did Next

  • By Susan Coolidge

    Read by Susan O’Malley

  • Release Date: 1/01/00

  • Formats: Digital Audy

  Learn More
• 

  • What Katy Did

  • By Susan Coolidge

    Read by Susan O’Malley

  • Release Date: 8/01/97

  • Formats: Digital Audy

  Twelve-year-old Katy Carr was always dreaming of the time when something would happen to make her famous. But when it does happen, it’s not at all what she wants.

  This is the moving story of how Katy Carr overcomes her tragic accident and learns to be as loving and as patient as the beautiful invalid, Helen.

  Susan Coolidge’s famous story, set in the small nineteenth-century American town of Burnet, has charmed generations of children all around the world.

  • What Katy Did

  • By Susan Coolidge

    Read by Susan O’Malley

  • Release Date: 8/01/97

  • Formats: Digital Audy

  Learn More

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