Catholic Authors: Agnes Repplier (1859-1950)

REPPLIER, Agnes, author, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., April 1, 1859, daughter of John and Agnes Repplier. She is of French descent, and was educated in the Roman Catholic church. As a child she was by
no means precocious, for at the age of nine she could not read, and her only accomplishment was reciting long ballads and other poems, which her retentive memory made it easy to commit. At school she studied diligently whatever interested her, but neglected all other lessons. She attended Eden Hall, near Torresdale, Philadelphia, and several private schools in the city, and on leaving school continued her own education by reading. Her earliest publications were short stories and little essays, which appeared in newspapers and in The Catholic World; but their excellence of style and spontaneity soon opened to her the columns of magazines of higher grade, and in later years her work was most frequently to be found in The Atlantic Monthly. Her books contain the best of those essays which first appeared in fugitive form. She has published Books and Men (1888); Points of View (1891); Essays in Miniature (1892); A Book of Famous Verse (1892); Essays in Idleness (1893); In the Dozy Hours (1895), Varia (1897), and Philadelphia: The Place and the People (1898). A noted critic wrote in 1894: “One of the pleasant characteristics of Miss Repplier’s books is her lively interest in children. This she has drawn from recollections of her own childhood. Her mind is a treasury of anecdotes of her youth; and, indeed, so vivid a memory has she always been blessed with that even the droll incidents of her babyhood are woven into her sprightly talk, as they have frequently been in her written pages.

The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (Volume IX) (New York: James T. White & Company, 1910), 232.