Florence Converse

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Florence Converse (April 30, 1871 – February 13, 1967) was an American writer whose work spanned historical novels, mysteries, religious plays, and poetry. Born in New Orleans, she studied at Mrs. Charles's School, earned her bachelor's degree at Wellesley College in 1893, and a master's in 1903. She taught English at Wellesley and lived at Denison House, a Boston settlement, while also lecturing on Shelley in New Orleans in 1896. She worked on The Churchman from 1900 to 1908, then joined the Atlantic Monthly. Converse wrote plays, poems, and novels—among them Long Will, about the Peasants' Revolt of 1381—and edited children's books for E. P. Dutton. She also translated French works, including Marcel Nadaud's Birds of a Feather (1919). She lived in a long-term relationship known as a Boston marriage with Vida Dutton Scudder, from 1912 until Scudder's death in 1954. Converse died in 1967 at age 95, and Scudder and Converse are buried side by side in Newton Cemetery, Newton, Massachusetts.