Woman of the Century/Lilian Whiting

WHITING, Miss Lilian, journalist, poet and story-writer, was born in Niagara Falls. N. Y., the daughter of Hon. L. D. and Mrs. Lucretia Clement Whiting. Her ancestry runs back to Rev. William Whiting, the first Unitarian minister of Concord, Mass., tn the early part of the seventeenth century. Her paternal grandmother was born Mather, and was a direct descendant of Cotton Mather. On her mother's side her ancestry is also of New England people, largely of the Episcopal clergy. While their daughter was an infant, Mr. and Mrs. Whiting removed to Illinois. For some time the young couple served as principals of the public schools in Tiskilwa, Ill., the village near which lay their farm. Subsequently Mr. Whiting became the editor of the "Bureau County Republican," published in Princeton. In that work he was assisted by his wife. Later Mr. Whiting was sent to the State legislature as representative from his district, and, after some years in the lower house, was elected State senator, in which capacity he served for eighteen consecutive years. He was one of the framers of the present constitution of Illinois. Books and periodicals abounded in their simple home. Senator Whiting was a man of ability and integrity. His death, in 1889, left to his three children little in worldly estate. Mrs. Whiting died in 1875. Their only daughter, Lilian, was educated largely under private tuition and by her parents. Both devotees of literature, they pursued a theory of their own with their daughter, and from her cradle she was fairly steeped in the best literature of the world. She inherited from her mother much of the temperament of the mystic and the visionary, and her bent was always towards books and the world of thought. This temperamental affinity led her to the choice of journalism, and, practically unaided, she essayed her work. In 1876 she went to St. Louis, Mo., to enter upon her chosen pursuit. For three years she remained in that city. In the spring of 1879, through the acceptance of two papers on Margaret Fuller, Murat Hal stead gave her a place LILIAN WHITING. on his paper, the Cincinnati " Commercial. " After a year in Cincinnati she went, in the summer of 1880, to Boston, Mass., where she soon began to work for the "Evening Traveller" as an art writer, and to her writing of the art exhibitions and studio work in Boston and New York she added various miscellaneous contributions. In 1885 she was made the literary editor of the "Traveller." In 1890 she resigned her place on the "Traveller," and, three days after, she took the editorship-in-chief of the Boston " Budget." In that paper she has done the editorial writing, the literary reviews and her "Beau Monde" column. For several years she has had her home in the Brunswick Hotel, in Boston. In person she is of medium height, slight, with sunny hair and blue eyes. Her hand is ever open to those who need material aid.