Elizabeth Seifert (1897–1983)

Elizabeth Seifert published her first book in 1938 when she was forty-one years old. As one of thirteen hundred entries for the Dodd, Mead, and Company Redbook magazine prize for a first novel, Seifert’s Young Doctor Halahad won the $10,000 prize. She continued to write two books a year until 1979, when illness forced her to slow down. Her last novel, Two Doctors, Two Lives, was published in November 1982.

Seifert was born in Washington, Missouri, on June 19, 1897. Her father, Richard C. Seifert, emigrated from Hanover, Germany, when he was seventeen. Her mother, Anna Sandford Seifert, could trace her family back to 1634 in Massachusetts. Two of Elizabeth’s four sisters, Shirley and Adele, were also writers.

Seifert attended public schools in St. Louis, graduated from Soldan High School, and attended medical school at Washington University. Authorities requested that she withdraw because during World War I medical students were required to serve in army hospitals as part of their training. The base hospital unit for Washington University was in France, and since Seifert was not permitted to serve there because she was a woman, she became ineligible to receive a medical degree at the school. She did enroll in courses in anatomy, physiology, and medical dietetics; she also audited a creative writing course. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1918.

In 1920 Seifert married John J. Gasparotti, a World War I veteran. Sometime later the family, which then included four children, moved to Moberly, Missouri, when Gasparotti’s company transferred him there to build and operate an ice plant. In 1926 Gasparotti’s health began to fail, a year after the deadline for injured war veterans to claim benefits had passed. By 1937 he had become totally disabled, forcing Seifert to secure employment as a clinical secretary in a Moberly hospital.

At the same time, Seifert intensified her interest in writing fiction, a practice she began at the age of ten. Her sister Shirley Seifert was a published author of historical novels, and Elizabeth asked her to critique her first novel. The older sister sent the manuscript to her agent, hoping he would discourage Elizabeth from writing. Instead, he praised it as one of the best novels he had read. Elizabeth’s mother asked her to stop writing so she would not compete with her older sister. When Elizabeth refused to comply, she was excluded from her mother’s will.

Seifert kept to a schedule of writing from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m., with a break at 10:30 for a walk. During the walk she would sort out plots and characters. After lunch she read several newspapers and looked through technical medical journals for recent discoveries and obscure tidbits she might use in her novels, which always revolved around hospitals and the medical profession. In 1976, on one of her morning walks, Seifert fell and broke her left arm and shoulder. Having temporarily lost the use of that arm, she taught herself to type with one hand.

On the publication of her fifty-first novel, Seifert’s American publisher held a celebratory luncheon in New York at the Waldorf Astoria that was attended by her English publisher. When she was honored with a dinner in London in 1960, Seifert, whose books were sold in more than thirty countries, had published more books in the United Kingdom than any other American writer. Early in her career she was asked to write soap operas, and motion picture companies expressed interest in her novels and in hiring her as a scriptwriter. She refused, however, to leave Moberly to live in New York or Hollywood. When aspiring authors asked for her advice, Seifert told them to “Read, read, read. Start with the back of cereal boxes and continue straight through the Book of Revelations.”

A Republican and active in the Episcopal Church, Seifert became the first woman in ninety years to serve on her church’s vestry. She was a member of the State Historical Society of Missouri, the American Association of University Women, the Sorosis Club, Beta Sigma Phi, the Authors’ League of America, the Ozark Folklore Society, and the Parent Teachers Association. When she died on June 17, 1983, newspapers across the United States carried her obituary. She is buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis beside her husband, who passed away in 1958.