Cornelia Wells Walter (June 7, 1815 – January 31, 1898)[1] is generally considered to have been the first woman editor of a major newspaper in the United States.

Originally the paper's theater critic, at age 29 she became the editor of the Transcript, taking over the position from her brother upon his death in 1842.

She opposed slavery and praised Frederick Douglass, but also chided abolitionists and published articles against abolition.

She criticized authors who were later firmly embraced by the literary canon, such as James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe.

[2] In September 1847, she retired from the paper to marry William Bordman Richards, a Boston iron and steel merchant.