Helen Dore Boylston

Helen Dore Boylston (April 4 1895 - September 30 1984) was the American author of the popular "Sue Barton" nurse series and Carol Page actor series.

Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Boylston spent her childhood there, leaving to attend Simmons College in Boston for a year. She thought of studying medicine like her father, but chose nursing since the training was shorter. She graduated as a nurse from Massachusetts General Hospital in 1915 and sailed for France with the Harvard Medical Unit, as part of the British Expeditionary Force. She nursed the wounded from the First World War, specializing as an anesthesiologist and reaching the rank of captain. Boylston wrote about her experiences in Sister: Diary of a War Nurse, which was published in 1927.

After the 1918 Armistice, Boylston remained in Europe working for the Red Cross for two years providing services to civilians in Albania, Poland, Russia, Italy, and Germany. During periods in the United States, Boylston worked as the head of an outpatient department and as an instructor in anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, as well a psychiatric nurse in New York City and a head nurse in a Connecticut hospital, experiences she was to mine in future books. Between 1921 and 1924 she worked again with the Red Cross.

Boylston met reporter Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of the not-yet-famous Laura Ingalls Wilder on a train between Paris and Warsaw. Boylston was still anxious for adventure and wrote to a friend "Daddy wants me to settle down, but I'm young! I'm young! Why shouldn't I live? What is old age if it has no memories except of 40 years or so of blank days?" In 1926 Lane, Boylston and their French maid traveled from Paris to Albania in a car they named "Zenobia" planning to live in Albania and earn their living by writing. An account of the journey, called Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford was published in 1983.



Boylston lived in Tirana, Albania for two years, and according to her publisher "once made the Albanian Prime Minister carry her trunk off the boat and tried to tip him, not knowing who he was." She was also "shot at for two hours in a ditch in southern Albania, owing to a mistake in identity". While there, Boylston assisted at an Albanian school of nursing that was directed by a fellow graduate from the School of Nursing at Massachusetts General Hospital. After two years, she saw a picture of a baked potato in a magazine, and feeling homesick, returned to the US.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Boylston began writing and publishing stories more seriously. She published articles and stories in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and Argosy, and wrote a radio script for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, as well as a reminiscence of her student nursing days in the American Journal of Nursing.

In 1936 Boylston published Sue Barton: Student Nurse, the first of her seven Sue Barton books. The books followed the career of a red-haired nurse as she progressed through her training, career, marriage and motherhood, and sought to maintain her independence. The books were highly successful, selling millions of copies in English and translations. The books have remained in print ever since.

With Sue Barton married to Bill Barry and expecting her first baby in Sue Barton: Superintendent Nurse, Boylston began a new series about another career woman, this time an actress Carol Page. She incorporated the advice and experience of Eva Le Gallienne, her friend and neighbor. Boylston later returned to Sue Barton, publishing the final two books in the series Sue Barton: Neighborhood Nurse and Sue Barton: Staff Nurse in 1949 and 1952 respectively. In 1955, Boylston published Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross, a biography for young adults of Civil War nurse Clara Barton.

Boylston never married. She died in Trumbull, Connecticut at the age of 89, leaving no known relatives.

Works

 * Sister: Diary of a War Nurse (1927)
 * Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1936)
 * Sue Barton, Senior Nurse (1937)
 * Sue Barton, Visiting Nurse (1938)
 * Sue Barton, Rural Nurse (1939)
 * Sue Barton, Superintendent of Nurses (1940)
 * Carol Goes Backstage (1941)
 * Carol Plays Summer Stock (1942)
 * Carol on Broadway (1944)
 * Carol on Tour (1946)
 * Sue Barton, Neighborhood Nurse (1949)
 * Sue Barton, Staff Nurse (1952)
 * Clara Barton: Founder of American Red Cross (1955 and 1963)
 * Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford (with Rose Wilder Lane) (1983)