1. Writers from British
North America

Notes & Translation ©2025 John Claiborne Isbell, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0458.01

The region of British North America, consolidated after the French loss of Quebec and Louisiana in 1763—or what after 1776 and American independence became the separate Canadian and United States national traditions—has done considerable work reclaiming women writers from the period 1776–1848. My English-language research identifies fourteen Canadian women writers in this period and for the United States, thirty-three in the eighteenth century and 159 in the nineteenth, outpacing any other national reclamation project but the British. The sheer volume of American women writers recovered, as in the case of British writers, has caused us to divide these two traditions by century.

Canada (14 writers)

Emily Elizabeth Shaw Beavan (1818–6 August 1897), born in Belfast, emigrated to New Brunswick with her family in 1836. Here, she married Frederick Williams Cadwalleder Beavan in 1838. In 1843, they emigrated to England, where she published Sketches and Tales Illustrative of Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick, North America before emigrating to Australia in 1852. She also wrote poems and short stories. She died in Sydney.1

Julia Catherine Beckwith (10 March 1796–28 November 1867), born in New Brunswick to a francophone mother and an anglophone father, grew up there, in Novia Scotia, and in Quebec. Her (and arguably Canada’s) first novel, St. Ursula’s Convent, written at age seventeen, appeared in 1824 in 165 copies. She married George Henry Hart in 1822, moving with him to the United States where she published her second novel, Tonnawanda. Beckwith returned to New Brunswick in 1831 with her husband and six children, and there wrote a third novel, Edith, which remained in manuscript.2

Deborah How Cottnam (c. 1725/1728–31 December 1806), a colonial poet and schoolmistress baptized in Massachusetts, was raised in Nova Scotia but returned to Boston a prisoner in 1744 during King George’s War. By 1774, she ran a school in Salem for the Loyalist gentry, which she moved to Novia Scotia in 1777 with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, then later to New Brunswick. She was married to Samuel Cottnam from 1742 until his death in 1780. Her selected poems saw publication in 1845.3

Eliza Lanesford Cushing (19 October 1794–4 May 1886), born in Massachusetts, published two anonymous novels in Boston, Saratoga and Yorktown, before marrying Frederick Cushing in 1828 and then moving to Montreal with her sister in 1833. Widowed in 1845–1846, the two sisters founded a monthly girls’ magazine, The Snow-Drop. Cushing later edited The Literary Garland, where the two published poetry and prose, from 1850–1851; Cushing also published short stories and plays in both Canada and the United States. Her sister Harriet Vaughan Cheney appears here under United States nineteenth-century women writers.4

Sarah Herbert (October 1824–22 December 1846), born in Ireland, emigrated to Canada with her family in 1826. Their ship sank off the coast of Nova Scotia, her mother dying soon after. Herbert submitted poetry and stories to journals such as The Olive Branch, The Novascotian, and The British North American Wesleyan Methodist Magazine. In 1843, her serial novel Agnes Maitland won a contest sponsored by The Olive Branch, of which she became editor and proprietor in 1844, publishing Harriet Beecher Stowe among others. She died of consumption in 1846.5

Anne Langton (24 June 1804–10 May 1893), an English portrait and landscape painter, emigrated to Canada with her parents in 1837 to join her brother after her family had fallen on hard times. Here, she published her early memoirs as A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada.6

Maria Morris Miller (12 February 1813–29 October 1875), a botanical painter, was born and died in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where in 1840 she married Garret Trafalgar Nelson Miller. She presented her works to Queen Victoria and received royal patronage. Besides three catalogs of Nova Scotian wildflowers, 1840–1866, Miller published a volume of poetry with her sister in 1856, Metrical Musings.7

Maria Monk (27 June 1816-summer of 1849) published the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk in 1836, purporting to be memoirs of seven years in a Montreal convent, a tale of sexual slavery to priests and infanticide. It sold 26,000 copies amid a mood of anti-Catholic hysteria. Monk moved to Philadelphia with her partner, Graham Monk, where the birth of a child out of wedlock in 1838 alienated most of her followers. Several inconsistencies, and the news that she had spent seven years in the Magdalen Asylum for Wayward Girls, suggest that the book was a hoax.8

Susanna Moodie, née Strickland (6 December 1803–8 April 1885), born in England, published her first children’s book, Spartacus, in 1822. She married John Moodie in 1831, emigrating with him to Upper Canada in 1832. Her memoir Roughing it in the Bush appeared in 1852, with a sequel in 1853. She also published poetry and novels. Margaret Atwood devoted a volume of poetry to her.9

Ellen Kyle Noel [or Mrs. J.V. Noel] (22 December 1815–20 June 1873) emigrated to Kingston, Ontario where she married John le Vavasour Noel in 1833. She ran a seminary for women in Savannah, Georgia from about 1836–1847, then returning to Kingston. Noel wrote stories and serialized novels for Montreal and Toronto periodicals: the Canadian Illustrated News, the Saturday Reader. Her works include The Abbey of Rathmore, and Other Tales; The Cross of Pride; Hilda; and Passion and Principle.10

Louise-Amélie Panet [or Berczy] (27 January 1789–24 March 1862), a poetess and painter born in the city of Quebec, married William Bent Berczy in 1819 and died in Quebec.11

Hannah Maynard Pickard [or A Lady] (25 November 1812–11 March 1844), born in Vermont, moved to Concord, Massachusetts with her family aged three, then to Wilbraham and Boston from 1826–1828. Here, Pickard taught at two sabbath schools and wrote for the Sabbath School Messenger, Guide to Holiness, and other periodicals. She wrote poems, sketches, and prose and published two novels which saw several editions: Procrastination, or, Maria Louisa Winslow, 1840, and The Widow’s Jewels: In Two Stories, 1844. In 1838, Pickard began teaching at the Wilbraham Academy. She married Humphrey Pickard in 1841, relocating to Saint John, New Brunswick in Canada, where he preached. Pickard died of heart failure aged thirty-two. The posthumous Memoir and Writings of Mrs. Hannah Maynard Pickard, 1845, included her history, diary, correspondence, and some other writings.12

Dame Elizabeth Posthuma Simcoe (22 September 1762–17 January 1850), an English heiress, artist, and diarist, lost both father and mother before baptism, when her aunt adopted her. In 1782, she married John Graves Simcoe, later the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, with whom she had eleven children. Besides her 595 watercolors of what became Toronto, her diary was published in 1911.13

Grizelda Elizabeth Cottnam Tonge [or Portia] (1803–19 May 1825), born in Nova Scotia, sailed to join her father in Guyana in 1825, where she died of a tropical disease. Her poems were written under the pen name ‘Portia.’14

The United States: The Eighteenth Century (33 writers)

Phillis Wheatley,
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)

As the slaveowner John Wheatley remarks in his prefatory letter to this collection, “Phillis was brought from Africa to America, in the Year 1761, between Seven and Eight Years of Age.” She was thus around twenty when she published this poem, having overcome the barriers of language, culture, and continued enslavement to do so. What seem to be her own prefatory remarks on the poems, after the customary demurrals, add with startling confidence, “we presume they have too much Merit to be cast aside with Contempt.” (p. iv). Her master’s letter, she concludes, sufficiently indicates the disadvantages regarding learning she has faced, and that is certainly the case.

It bears saying that this is a good poem. The rhyme is undemanding, but the Augustan heroic couplets are well-managed: end-stopped as the eighteenth century preferred, with one routine syntactical contortion in line 4 and just two poeticisms, the word “sable” and the phrase “th’angelic train.” The language seems in fact unusually limpid for this period against which Wordsworth revolted a generation later in his quest for ordinary speech. The argument, in turn, covers considerable ground in eight lines, from the old slavers’ pretention that enslavement saved souls, through outright racism—the essentialist claim that black skin is per se diabolic—to the redemptive argument that any human soul may be saved and thus worthy of Heaven. The entire poem, in short, is couched in the discourse of the oppressor. One may speculate that Wheatley, in her twelve years of enslavement, had had time for other thoughts than these European tropes; other poems in this collection are without exception longer productions. But the tropes are handled with skill, and the concluding antithesis to answer the overtly racist opening has a certain barbed weight.

One may note some resemblance between this short poem’s redemptive narrative and that of the famous hymn “Amazing Grace,” written in December 1772, i.e. almost simultaneously, and published in 1779. Wheatley opens “’Twas mercy brought me,” while John Newton opens verse two, “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.” The juxtaposition is curious, given that the abolitionist Newton was a reformed slave trader and Wheatley, a victim of that trade. And in fact, the whole story of her volume’s publication is thought-provoking. The volume appeared in Boston and London (where Newton then preached), with three prefatory texts: from Wheatley herself, from her slaveowner, John Wheatley, and from an assembly of Boston notables, including the colony’s governor and the revolutionary John Hancock, which examined Wheatley to determine whether she had been able to write the poems herself. Thomas Jefferson for his part, who unlike George Washington did not free his slaves in his will, refused to see any value in Wheatley’s poetic production.16 Black, female, and carried into slavery, the confidence Wheatley displays in her volume’s opening text is all the more inspiring when one considers the range of obstacles she faced. Finally, let us note that the word freedom does not feature in this short text, very much in the air though it was in colonial Boston in 1773, where Wheatley wrote.

Abigail Adams (22 November 1744–28 October 1818), born in Massachusetts to a Congregationalist minister and slaveholder, was the wife and mother of United States presidents. She married John Adams in 1764 and they had six children. In 1784–1788, the couple were in Paris and London, where John was posted. John became president in 1797–1800, dying in 1826. The adult Adams, a Unitarian, opposed slavery and advocated for women’s rights, though marked by conservatism. She and her husband exchanged 1,200 letters.17

Hannah Adams (2 October 1755–15 December 1831), born in Massachusetts, was perhaps the first professional woman writer in the United States. Self-taught, Adams later taught Latin and Greek, publishing three major works: the ecumenical A View of Religions, 1784; A Summary History of New-England, 1799; and History of the Jews, 1812. A self-proclaimed Unitarian, her acquaintances included John Adams, a distant cousin, and the abbé Grégoire. She wrote a short autobiography before her death.18

Katharine Greene Amory (22 November 1731–22 April 1777), born in Boston, married John Amory in 1756. They had ten children. She kept a Loyalist diary during the Revolutionary War, leaving Boston for London in 1775, where she died. The diary was published in 1923.19

Abigail Abbot Bailey (2 February 1746–11 February 1815), born in New Hampshire, married Major Asa Bailey in 1767. He was physically abusive and adulterous. They had seventeen children before Bailey learned that Asa had raped their daughter. Asa attempted to resettle the family in New York, which had stricter divorce laws; Bailey finally obtained a divorce in 1792. Struggling to support her children, Bailey found families in New Hampshire with whom they could live; her memoirs, written for her church, were published in 1815, the year she died.20

Lucy Barnes (6 March 1780–29 August 1809), born in New Hampshire to a Unitarian Universalist minister, proselytized for universal salvation before her early death. Her letters, dissertations, and poems were published posthumously in a 71-page pamphlet as The Female Christian.21

Ann Eliza Bleecker (October 1752–23 November 1783), born in New York to American Dutch gentry, married John James Bleecker in 1769. Bleecker’s mother and infant daughter died while the family fled to Albany during the Revolutionary War, her sister during the return journey. Bleecker’s pastoral poems and short stories, first appearing in her letters, were published posthumously by her daughter in 1793; her Indian Captivity novel The History of Maria Kittle was republished in 1797.22

Jemima Condict (24 August 1754–14 November 1779) was born and died in New Jersey. She kept a diary in partial numerical code with several mentions of the Revolutionary War. It was published in 1930.23

Rebecca Dickinson (25 July 1738–31 December 1815), born in Massachusetts, was apprenticed as a gownmaker around the age of twelve. She began keeping a diary in her thirties, describing Revolutionary events and her struggles with her Calvinist faith, which was published posthumously. Dickinson declined marriage at least three times; her success as a gownmaker enabled her to live independently as she desired.24

Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker (27 February 1735–24 November 1807), who lived and died in Philadelphia, married Henry Drinker in 1761. She kept a 2,100-page diary which was published in 1889. Federalist and Quaker, Drinker’s diary sheds light on Quakerism and life in Philadelphia before and after the Revolutionary War. Henry, who was neutral and pacifist, was arrested for treason in 1777; Drinker appealed to George Washington and secured Henry’s release in 1778.25

Margaretta Faugères (11 October 1771 – 9 January 1801), born in New York City, was the daughter of Ann Eliza Bleecker, whose manuscripts she published after 1790 in The New York Magazine alongside her own poems and prose. She married Peter Faugères in 1792. In 1791, she published Fine Feelings Exemplified in the Conduct of a Negro Slave, an abolitionist riposte to Thomas Jefferson, and in 1797, the pamphlet The Ghost of John Young in opposition to capital punishment. In 1795, she wrote the play Belisarius: A Tragedy, on human rights as exemplified by the French Revolution.26

Jenny Fenno (1765?-?) may have been the Jennet Fenno who was born in 1765. Her volume Original Compositions in Prose and Verse of 1791 contains around seventy poems, mostly in heroic couplets, and fifteen prose works. Fenno begins by justifying herself as a woman writer; several elegies for Boston’s Second Baptist Church suggest she may have been a member.27

Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson [or Betsy Graeme] (3 February 1737–23 February 1801), born in Pennsylvania, met Laurence Sterne and George III while visiting London in 1764. She secretly married Hugh Henry Fergusson in 1772; her father died the next month and under colonial law, she became a feme covert—all her inherited property belonged to her husband. Henry left for London in 1778, Fergusson remaining in Pennsylvania. Her property was confiscated in 1779 as belonging to her Loyalist husband, and it took her two years to regain it, as chronicled in her letters and poems.28

Sarah Logan Fisher (1751–1796), born in Pennsylvania, married Thomas Fisher in 1772. She kept a diary after 1777—the year George Washington lodged at their family estate—in which she records her Quaker and Loyalist views. Thomas was imprisoned for eight months that year with other Quakers as a suspected Tory. The couple refused to use the continental money, and that prohibited them from engaging in trade. Fisher’s diary was published in 1958.29

Hannah Webster Foster (10 September 1758/59–17 April 1840), born in Massachusetts, was the mother of writers Harriet Vaughan Cheney and Eliza Lanesford Cushing, both listed here. Foster began writing on politics in the Boston press in the 1770s. In 1785, she married Rev. John Foster. She published her epistolary novel The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton anonymously in 1797. Based on a true story of seduction, it sold well, but her name first appeared in it after 1866. In 1798, Foster published The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils, which sold less well. She then returned to journalism, moving to Montreal to be with her daughters at her husband’s death in 1829.30

Winifred Marshall Gales (10 July 1761–26 June 1839), born in England, married Joseph Gales Sr. in 1784. Gales published a novel, The History of Lady Emma Melcombe and Her Family, in 1787, and The Sheffield Independent with Joseph until 1794 when he fled to continental Europe. Gales joined him in Germany and the couple emigrated to Philadelphia in 1795, then to North Carolina where in 1804, Gales published Matilda Berkely; or, Family Anecdotes, the first known novel by a resident of that state. Firm Unitarians and Jeffersonian Republicans, the couple left Raleigh for Washington, D.C. in 1833.31

Grace Growden Galloway (1727–1782), born in Pennsylvania, married Joseph Galloway in 1753. Joseph, Speaker of the Pennsylvania House from 1766, was removed in 1775 as a Loyalist. He fled to the British with their daughter and Galloway became a social pariah, as recorded in her diary, which she began the day after Joseph fled. When she refused to evacuate her property—confiscated in her husband’s name—the state put new locks on her doors. Her testament willing the property to her daughter was honored after the Treaty of Paris in 1783.32

Hannah Griffitts (1727–1817), born in Pennsylvania, lived in Philadelphia until her death. A Quaker, she wrote elegies and sharp political satires celebrating colonial opposition to the British, which she circulated among her female acquaintanceship, though a few appeared in print. Some sixty of her poems feature in her cousin Milcah Martha Moore’s commonplace book, published in 1997.33

Mary Jane ‘Mercy’ Harbison (18 March 1770–9 December 1837), born in New Jersey, married John Harbison in 1787. In western Pennsylvania in 1792, Harbison was captured with her three small children by Native Americans, who killed two of the children. After several days, she escaped with the third, giving a deposition of her captivity to the magistrates in Pittsburgh.34

Susannah Willard Johnson (20 February 1729/30–27 November 1810), born in Massachusetts, married Captain James Johnson in 1757, having fourteen children in all. She was captured with her family during an Abenaki raid in 1754, at the outbreak of the French and Indian War. They were marched to Quebec, then held for ransom until sold into slavery to the French. She returned to New Jersey in 1757. Johnson dictated her captivity memoir in 1796, using her surviving letters, notes, and diary, and edited subsequent editions.35

Rebecca Hammond Lard (Laird) (7 March 1772–28 September 1855), born in Massachusetts, married Samuel Laird in 1801, moving to Indiana after 1819. In 1820, she published the volume Miscellaneous Poems on Moral and Religious Subjects in Vermont, followed by a twelve-page booklet, On the Banks of the Ohio, in 1823—the first known poem to be published by an Indiana resident.36

Milcah Martha Moore (1740–1829) was born on the island of Madeira, moving to Pennsylvania in 1761. In 1767, Moore married her cousin Charles Moore and was expelled from the Society of Friends, rejoining it at his death in 1801. Between the 1760s and 1778, Moore kept a commonplace book (first published in 1997) featuring poems by over a dozen female acquaintances. Some of these, and some of her own poems, appeared in the 1787 textbook she edited for young readers entitled Miscellanies, Moral and Instructive, in Prose and Verse.37

Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton (August 1759–14 May 1846), born in Boston, married Perez Morton in 1781, later Speaker of the Massachusetts House. In about 1787, Perez began an affair with Morton’s younger sister, who committed suicide. In 1792, Morton published her anti-slavery poem The African Chief, though her father had been a slave trader. Morton published three more volumes of poetry, 1790–1799, and an autobiographical sketch in 1823.38

Judith Sargent Stevens Murray (1 May 1751–9 June 1820), born in Massachusetts, married John Stevens in 1769. In 1786, John fled the United States to avoid debtors’ prison, dying soon after; in 1788, Murray married the Universalist Rev. John Murray. Murray recorded her over 2,500 letters in letter books, discovered in 1984; between 1782 and 1816, she also published books, essays, poems, and plays, notably her essay On the Equality of the Sexes, written in 1779 and published in 1790, two years before Mary Wollstonecraft.39

Elizabeth Porter Phelps (24 November 1747–1 January 1817), born in Massachusetts, married Charles Phelps, Jr. in 1770. Phelps kept a manuscript diary for 54 years, an important source on farm and domestic life at the turn of the nineteenth century.40

Martha Laurens Ramsay (3 November 1759–10 June 1811), born in South Carolina, married David Ramsay in 1787. They had eleven children. Ramsay’s mother died in 1770 and she was raised by her uncle, who moved to England, then France after 1775. Her father, a wealthy plantation owner and slave trader, became President of the Second Continental Congress in 1777. Captured by the British, he joined Ramsay in France from 1782–1784, when she returned to Charleston. Her diary and letters were published posthumously by her husband.41

Susanna Rowson, née Haswell (1762–2 March 1824), born in England, moved to Massachusetts in 1767. During the Revolutionary War in 1778, the family’s property was confiscated, and they were returned to England. She married William Rowson in 1786, publishing her novel Charlotte Temple in 1791. It has had over 200 editions. In 1793, the couple returned to Philadelphia as actors, where Rowson wrote a novel, an opera, a musical farce, and an address to American troops. Rowson left the stage in 1797, running a school and publishing more novels, plays, a spelling dictionary, and two books on geography.42

Anna Young Smith (5 November 1756–3 April 1780), born in Philadelphia, married Dr. William Smith in 1775. She shared her poems within Philadelphia’s literary circles from 1773 until her marriage. Most were published posthumously, though Smith’s revolutionary Elegy to the Memory of the American Volunteers appeared in The Pennsylvania Magazine in 1775.43

Annis Boudinot Stockton (1 July 1736–6 February 1801), born in Pennsylvania, married Richard Stockton around 1757. Richard signed the Declaration of Independence; George Washington, with whom she corresponded, visited their Princeton home. It was plundered by Cornwallis during the Revolutionary War, while Richard, imprisoned by the British, died in 1781. Stockton’s brother served as President of the Continental Congress in 1782–1783. Stockton published odes, pastorals, elegies, sonnets, epitaphs, and hymns, and was read in Europe. Her unpublished poems later tripled her complete works in length.44

Mercy Otis Warren (25 September 1728–19 October 1814), born in Massachusetts, married James Warren in 1754; he later became Speaker of the Massachusetts House. Warren, who corresponded with the revolutionary figures John Adams, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and Thomas Jefferson, also published observations on the United States Constitution in 1788, advocating for a Bill of Rights; a collection of poems and plays in 1790; and in 1805, a three-volume history of the American Revolution.45

Helena Wells, later Whitford (1761?–1824), born in South Carolina, moved to London with her family in 1777. The State of South Carolina later seized their colonial property. Wells ran a school in London with her sister from 1789–1799; she married Edward Whitford in 1801. Wells published two novels and two treatises on education between 1798 and 1809.46

Phillis Wheatley Peters, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly (c. 1753–55 December 1784), born in Africa, was abducted and sold into slavery in Massachusetts in 1761. Wheatley, whose first given name was that of the slave ship that transported her, was reading Greek and Latin by the age of twelve and wrote her first surviving poem at fourteen. Wheatley published her first book of poems in London in 1773; she was manumitted in 1774, her former owners dying in 1774–1778. She married John Peters in 1778; her 1779 proposal for a second volume of poems failed for lack of patrons. Peters was imprisoned for debt in 1784; Wheatley died that year aged thirty-one, her infant daughter dying the same day.47

Eliza Yonge Wilkinson (7 February 1757–1806?), born in South Carolina to a slave-owning family, married Joseph Wilkinson in 1774. He died the following year, and she married Peter Porcher in 1786. Twelve of Wilkinson’s letters from 1779–1781 were published, heavily edited, in 1839.48

The United States: The Nineteenth Century (159 writers)

Lois Bryan Adams (14 October 1817–28 June 1870), born in New York, moved to Michigan with her family in 1823. In 1841, she married James Randall Adams, a newspaper editor who died in 1848. Adams published in the Michigan and the New York press, contributing to and editing The Michigan Farmer during the 1850s.49

Lucy Bakewell Audubon (18 January 1787–18 June 1874), born in England, emigrated with her family to Connecticut in 1798. In 1808, she married John James Audubon, whose ornithological work she made financially possible, working as a teacher and governess. They settled in Kentucky. Audubon also arranged the publication of John’s Birds of America, 1827–1838, and edited The Life of John James Audubon.50

Delia Salter Bacon (2 February 1811–2 September 1859), born in a log cabin in Tallmadge, Ohio, relocated to New England soon after. In 1831, she published Tales of the Puritans anonymously; in 1832, she beat Edgar Allan Poe in a short story contest. Bacon moved to New York in 1836, publishing a play there in 1839. After 1845, Bacon worked on her theory that a group led by (the unrelated) Francis Bacon had authored Shakespeare’s plays. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman admired her. Bacon’s trip to England in 1846, with a minister, caused controversy. She spent her last years in lunatic asylums in England and the United States.51

Margaret Jewett Smith Bailey (1812?–17 May 1882), born in Massachusetts, converted to Methodism aged seventeen and journeyed to the Oregon Country as a missionary in 1837. In 1839, she married William J. Bailey, whom she divorced in 1854 because of his drinking and abuse. She contributed prose and poetry to The Oregon Spectator after 1846, the first local poet to be published west of the Rocky Mountains. Falsely accused of fornication at the mission, and a divorcee, Bailey published The Grains in 1854 to clear her name. It is the first known novel to be published in Oregon. Only three copies were extant before republication in 1986.52

Margaret L. Bailey, née Shands (12 December 1812–1888), born in Virginia, moved with her family to the Cincinnati area aged about six. She married Dr. Gamaliel Bailey in 1833; they had twelve children, of whom six survived infancy. From 1844–1852, Bailey edited The Youth’s Monthly Visitor. The couple moved to Washington, D.C. in 1846, where she hosted an abolitionist salon. Bailey edited The National Era in 1859–1860; her poems appeared in her periodicals and her husband’s and were uncollected at her death.53

Harriette Newell Woods Baker (19 August 1815–26 April 1893), born in Massachusetts, published her first short story aged eleven. In 1835, aged twenty, she married Rev. Abijah Richardson Baker. After the marriage, Baker continued to publish, also assisting her husband after 1850 in editing two monthly periodicals. Several of Baker’s 200-odd moral and religious tales were republished in England and translated into French and German; her 1861 tale Tim: The Scissors Grinder sold half a million copies.54

Martha Violet Ball (17 May 1811–22 December 1894), born in Boston, was a teacher for thirty years, operating a Boston school for young African American girls with her sister in 1833–1839. She helped edit The Home Guardian, a periodical for intemperate women and girls, for 27 years from 1837. Ball was an active abolitionist and missionary organizer throughout her life, facing a pro-slavery mob in Philadelphia in 1838. She also published several small volumes with some success.55

Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes (1818–14 April 1863), born in Massachusetts to an acting family, made her stage debut at the age of three. Her New York stage debut in 1834 earned mixed reviews. Barnes had more success as a playwright, following two successful adaptations with her original blank verse drama in 1837, Octavia Bragaldi, or, The Confession, which she performed in New York and then in England in 1841. Barnes continued writing and performing until her death; her original works were collected in 1848, but her adaptations and translations do not survive.56

Sidney Frances Bateman, née Cowell (29 March 1823–13 January 1881) was born to an acting family in America and married Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman aged sixteen. In the 1850s, the couple moved to St Louis, then New York, then London where Hezekiah managed the Lyceum Theater. Bateman managed the Lyceum for three years after her husband’s death in 1875, then managed the Sadler’s Wells Theater until her death. Bateman also published several plays, notably Self, 1857, which had some success.57

Elise Justine Bayard Cutting (16 August 1823–1853), born in New York, married Fulton Cutting in 1849. Cutting published poems frequently in the New York City periodicals The Knickerbocker and The Literary World, most signed “E.J.B.’ or ‘E.B.C.,’ her initials, and thus sometimes difficult to identify.58

Mary C. Billings, née Ward [after first marriage, Granniss; after second marriage, Webster; after third marriage, Billings] (12 July 1824–2 March 1904), born in Connecticut, was married three times, in 1845, 1869, and 1885, and widowed three times. Her first published poem was written at the age of twelve. Billings, a universalist minister later doing missionary work in Texas, continued to publish frequently in northern periodicals, her works sometimes being compiled in book form. Her first book, Emma Clermont, appeared in 1849.59

Sarah Tittle Bolton, née Barrett (18 December 1814–4 August 1893), born in Kentucky, moved with her family to Indiana around the age of three. At the age of thirteen, Bolton’s first published poem appeared. She married Nathaniel Bolton in 1831, publishing poetry and helping with her husband’s career editing a newspaper and in state politics. The couple were in Europe from 1855–1858. Nathaniel died soon after their return; Bolton remarried in 1863 but left for Europe for several years then returned to Indiana, continuing to publish poetry and to advocate for women’s property rights.60

Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta (11 November 1815–23 March 1891), born in Vermont, was the daughter of a United Irishman banished from Ireland after 1798. He died in 1819 and the family moved to Connecticut, then Rhode Island in 1838, where Botta taught and hosted a salon. Botta moved to Manhattan in 1845, there hosting the city’s leading literary salon, where she presented Edgar Allan Poe. Besides frequent periodical publications, her volume Poems appeared in 1848. She married Vincenzo Botta in Europe in 1855; he published a posthumous memorial of her in 1893.61

Maria Gowen [or Gowan] Brooks (1794–11 November 1845), born in Massachusetts, married John Brooks at around the age of nineteen, a man some thirty years older and her guardian after her father’s death. Brooks also changed her name from Abigail to Maria. She published her first volume of poetry in 1820: Judith, Esther, and other Poems. John died in 1823 and Brooks left for her brother’s coffee plantation in Cuba. In 1825, Brooks began publishing her epic poem Zophiël, which earned praise from Robert Southey and Edgar Allan Poe. In Europe in 1829–1831, she met Southey and the Marquis de Lafayette. Other poems and prose followed, in print and manuscript.62

Phoebe Hinsdale Brown, née Hinsdale (1 May 1783–10 October 1861), born in New York, lost her parents in infancy and her grandparents at age ten, when she was taken in by her sister for eight years as a sort of servant. Brown then could not write her name. In 1805, she married Timothy H. Brown, a housepainter. Between 1824–1857, she published two Sunday school books, some poems in the periodical press, and various hymns, often anonymously, including “I Love to Steal Awhile Away,” 1824. Her autobiography remained unpublished.63

Charity Bryant (22 May 1777–6 October 1851), born in Massachusetts, was the aunt of the poet William Cullen Bryant. In 1797, Bryant began working as a teacher. In 1807, she met Sylvia Drake, who remained her lifelong companion. They ran a tailoring business together and were accepted as a couple by their community. Bryant wrote many poems but instructed them all to be burned. The few that remain are mostly acrostic and addressed to Drake. The two are buried in Vermont under a shared headstone.64

Juliet Hamersley Lewis Campbell [or Judith Canute] (5 August 1823–26 December 1898), born in Pennsylvania, attended the Moravian Young Ladies’ Seminary after 1835. In 1842, she married James Hepburn Campbell. Campbell’s poems appeared in some prominent anthologies: The American Female Poets and Read’s Female Poets of America in 1848, The Female Poets of America in 1849. In 1862, Campbell published the long poem Legend of Infancy of Our Savior: A Christmas Carol. Campbell also published one known novel, Eros and Antieros; or, The Bachelor’s Ward, in 1857, as ‘Judith Canute.’ It was republished the following year under her own name but with a new title. The novel narrates the heroine Viola’s good education; Campbell’s father was Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.65

Francesca Anna Canfield, née Pascalis [or Salonina] (August 1803–23 May 1833), born in Pennsylvania, moved to New York City as a child with her family. At school, she learned French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, translating Verri’s Le notti romane and a volume of Lavater. Her prose and verse appeared in various periodicals, including the Mirror and the Minerva, often signed ‘Salonina.’ She married Palmer Canfield, in whose Canfield’s Lottery Argus she also published. Canfield contracted tuberculosis at nineteen and died of it ten years later. Her husband died the same year, preventing his edition of her works.66

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney [or Julia, Minnie May, Frank Fisher, Sadie Sensible, Minister’s Wife, Rev. Peter Benson’s Daughter] (6 April 1823–1 November 1908), born in Massachusetts, married Rev. Thomas J. Carney in 1849. Told by her mother “Never let me see any more of your poetry,” Carney hid her work until she began publishing in the Lancaster and Concord local papers at age fourteen. She taught from 1840–1849, publishing Sunday school instruction books and poems and sketches in reformist journals. From 1849, Carney wrote under various monikers for periodicals including the Christian Freeman, the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valley, the Phrenological Journal, Midland Monthly, the New Covenant, the New York National Agriculturist, the Universalist Miscellany, the Ladies’ Repository, and the Boston Olive Branch. She published two volumes of poetry, Gifts from Julia and Poetry of the Seasons.67

Anna Ella Carroll [or Hancock] (29 August 1815–19 February 1894), born in Maryland to the 1830–1831 governor, was raised by her father as his aide. In the 1850s, he joined the anti-immigrant but also pro-labor and anti-slavery Know Nothing party. In 1856, Carroll campaigned for Millard Fillmore, who carried Maryland; she published two books, The Star of the West and the anti-Catholic The Great American Battle, along with several pamphlets. With Lincoln’s election in 1860, Carroll freed her slaves, working to keep Maryland in the Union and after Fort Sumter, publishing a series of pamphlets laying out the constitutional grounds for Lincoln’s war powers. She also submitted a successful memorandum arguing for attack via the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, not the Mississippi, and advised Lincoln that permanent emancipation would require a constitutional amendment. Her war work went unpaid.68

Alice Cary (26 April 1820–12 February 1871), born in Ohio, was raised Universalist, the older sister of Phoebe Cary. The two began publishing poetry in the press in 1837, over their stepmother’s objections. Alice’s “The Child of Sorrow” appeared in 1838 and was praised by Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Greeley, and Rufus Griswold, who included the sisters in The Female Poets of America and wrote the preface for their 1849 Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary. The sisters moved to New York City in 1850, where their salon drew John Greenleaf Whittier, P.T. Barnum, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Horace Greeley, and others. Alice Cary wrote verse and prose for the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Putnam’s Magazine, the New York Ledger, the Independent, and other periodicals. Besides her collected articles, she wrote novels and poems including The Clovernook Children and Snow Berries, a Book for Young Folks.69

Phoebe Cary (4 September 1824–31 July 1871), born in Ohio, was the younger sister of Alice Cary. The two were largely self-educated. Phoebe Cary for a short time edited Revolution, a periodical published by Susan B. Anthony. The sisters appeared in Rufus Griswold’s The Female Poets of America, who prefaced their 1849 Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary. They moved to New York City in 1850, where Phoebe Cary published two volumes of verse: Poems and Parodies in 1854 and Poems of Faith, Hope and Love in 1867. Several of her poems were set as hymns, including “Nearer Home;” her Hymns for all Christians appeared in 1869. In their joint housekeeping, Phoebe took the lead, Alice being an invalid. Alice died of tuberculosis; Phoebe of hepatitis five months later. They are buried together.70

Virginia Randolph Cary (30 January 1786–2 May 1852), born most likely at her parents’ Tuckahoe plantation in Virginia, had twelve siblings including Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., later Governor of Virginia. After her mother’s death in 1789, Cary moved to Monticello, Virginia, with Thomas, who was the son-in-law of Thomas Jefferson. Her sister Ann married Gouverneur Morris. In 1805, Cary married her cousin Wilson Jefferson Cary. After his death in 1823, she published four books: Letters on Female Character, Addressed to a Young Lady, on the Death of Her Mother and Mutius: An Historical Sketch of the Fourth Century, both in 1828; Christian Parent’s Assistant, 1829; and Ruth Churchill; or, The True Protestant: A Tale for the Times, 1851.71

Luella Juliette Bartlett Case, née Bartlett (30 December 1807–1857), born in New Hampshire, was the granddaughter on the Governor of New Hampshire, whose life she was writing when she died. In 1828, she married Eliphalet Case and moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, where Eliphalet edited various newspapers. About 1845, the couple moved west. Eliphalet became editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, to which Case contributed prose and poetry. She also contributed to The Rose of Sharon, The Ladies’ Repository, The Star of Bethlehem, and The Universalist Review, and wrote hymns. In 1848, Case left her husband and returned to New Hampshire. She died either in September 1857 or on 10 October 1857. Her poems include “Joan of Arc in Prison.”72

Eliza Jane Cate (1812–1884), born in New Hampshire, worked in the cotton mills in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In Lowell, Cate wrote for the Lowell Offering, in which she published fiction under several pen names including ‘D,’ ‘Jennie,’ ‘Jane,’ ‘E. J. D,’ and ‘Frankin, NH.’ Cate continued publishing with the journal’s successor, the New England Offering, including “Rights and Duties of Mill Girls.” Her fictional series, Lights and Shadows of Factory Life in New England first appeared in The New World in 1843, describing the lives of female mill workers and allegedly selling 20,000 copies. Cate also published in the Olive Branch, Godey’s Lady’s Book, and Peterson’s Magazine. She wrote eight books, including A Year with the Franklins: Or, To Suffer and Be Strong, 1846, Rural Scenes in New England, 1848, and Jenny Ambrose; or, Life in the Eastern States, 1866.73

Frances Manwaring Caulkins (26 April 1795–1869), born in Connecticut, lost her father before her birth. Caulkins was largely self-taught, marrying Philemon Haven in 1807 and limited in schooling thereafter, though she read French and Latin and later studied German and Italian. Philemon died in 1819. Caulkins was first published in the Connecticut Gazette in 1816. She ran a small school for young ladies from 1820–1829, then a ladies’ academy in New London in 1829–1832, then again teaching in Norwich from 1832–1834. In New York, 1836–1842, Caulkins published two tracts with the American Tract Society in print runs approaching a million copies, followed in verse and prose by Children of the Bible and Child’s Hymn-Book, then the Tract Primer in 1847, Bible Studies in 1854–1859, and Eve and her Daughters in 1861. In 1852, Caulkins published The History of New-London. Her extensive manuscripts subsist.74

Betsey Guppy Chamberlain (29 December 1797–1886), born in New Hampshire, lost her mother aged four, through whom she may have had Abenaki heritage. Her father was involved in twenty-nine Superior Court cases, 1799–1828. Betsey married Josiah Chamberlain in 1820, who died in 1823. In 1828, Chamberlain sued her father to recover her dowry; despite success, she was forced to sell her small farm and travel to work in the mills. In 1834, she married Thomas Wright in Lowell. From 1840–1843, Chamberlain published thirty-three prose pieces in the Lowell Offering and from 1848–1850, five more in the New England Offering, under various pseudonyms—‘Betsey,’ ‘B.C.,’ ‘Jemima,’ ‘Tabitha.’ Her 1842 pieces The Indian Pledge and A Fire-Side Scene are satirical early protests against the treatment of Native Americans. In 1843, Chamberlain married Charles Boutwell in Illinois, having four husbands in total.75

Elizabeth Margaret Chandler (24 December 1807–2 November 1834), born to a Quaker family in Delaware, lost both her parents by the age of nine; she moved then to Philadelphia to live with a grandmother. Chandler drew national attention at eighteen with her 1825 poem “The Slave-Ship.” Benjamin Lundy invited her to contribute to his journal, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, where she called for immediate emancipation and for the better treatment of Native Americans. Many of her articles reappeared elsewhere, and her design “Am I not a Woman and a Sister?” became the masthead for The Liberator’s ladies’ section. The Chandlers moved to a farm in the Michigan Territory in 1830. Still writing and editing, Chandler also founded the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society, which created a main link on the Underground Railroad. She died aged twenty-six; posthumous volumes of essays and poems followed.76

Essie Blythe Cheesborough [or Motte Hall, Elma South, Ide Delmar, and E. B. C.] (1826–29 December 1905), born in South Carolina, was educated by private tutors in Philadelphia and Charleston. She contributed to the Southern Literary Gazette, Russell’s Magazine, and various other Southern literary journals, including Land We Love. After the Civil War, she contributed to the Watchman in New York City and to Family Journal, Wood’s Household Magazine, and Demorest’s. Cheesborough never published a book, although she left voluminous manuscripts on a variety of subjects.77

Harriet Vaughan Cheney (9 September 1796–14 May 1889) was born in Massachusetts into a Unitarian family where her mother, Hannah Webster Foster, and her sister, Eliza Lanesford Cushing, also wrote. Both are listed here. In 1820, she and her sister published The Sunday-School, or Village Sketches. The anonymous romance A Peep at the Pilgrims in Sixteen Thirty-Six: A Tale of Olden Times and The Rivals of Acadia: an Old Story of the New World followed in 1824 and 1827. Cheney married Edward Cheney in 1830 and moved to Montreal, as did her sister. The two contributed fiction and essays to the Literary Garland, Canada’s leading literary magazine, though Cheney still published longer works in Boston: for instance, Sketches from the Life of Christ in 1844. The two founded and edited The Snow-Drop, a girls’ magazine, between 1846–1852, after the deaths of their husbands.78

Caroline Chesebro’ (30 March 1825–16 February 1873), born in New York, was educated at a seminary there before taking a position at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn. In 1848, Chesebro’ was engaged as a contributor to Graham’s American Monthly Magazine. Between 1848 and 1851, her stories also appeared in Holden’s Dollar Magazine, The Knickerbocker, Sartain’s, Peterson’s Magazine, and Godey’s Lady’s Book, collected in Dream-Land by Daylight, A Panorama of Romance, 1851. In 1852 came the novel Isa, a Pilgrimage, which occasioned a controversy with her dedicatee Alice Cary. Victoria, or the World Overcome followed in 1856, and more prose and verse in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and Appletons’ Journal, along with other works. After 1865, Chesebro’ returned to teaching at Packer Collegiate Institute. She was the founder of The Packard Quarterly.79

Lydia Maria Child (11 February 1802–20 October 1880), born in Massachusetts, published the novel Hobomok anonymously in 1824, set in 1620s New England. In 1826, she founded The Juvenile Miscellany, closing in 1834 as her abolitionism affected sales. In 1828, she married David Lee Child and moved to Boston, publishing novels, poetry, and manuals: The Mothers Book, The Frugal Housewife. It saw thirty-three printings in twenty-five years. In 1833, Child published An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, the first American anti-slavery work in book form, followed by shorter tracts. She campaigned for equal female membership in the American Anti-Slavery Society, whose journal she edited after 1840. She also sheltered runaway slaves and wrote anti-slavery fiction, as well as poetry, notably “Over the River and through the Wood.” During the 1860s, Child also wrote pamphlets on Native American rights.80

Emily Chubbuck, later Emily Judson [or Fanny Forester] (23 August 1817–1 June 1854), born in New York, became a teacher in 1834. In 1840, she entered the Utica female seminary; she published her first novel, Charles Lynne, in 1841. After 1844, Chubbuck corresponded with Nathaniel Parker Willis, who published her in his New York Mirror and helped her publish in The Columbian and Graham’s Magazine. Chubbuck met Adoniram Judson in 1845 and they were married in 1846, sailing to Burma where Adoniram was a missionary. He died at sea in 1850 and Chubbuck returned consumptive to the United States. Chubbuck published The Great Secret, 1842; Allan Lucas, 1843; Alderbrook, 1846; Trippings in Author Land, 1846; An Olio of Domestic Verses, 1852; Kathayan Slave, 1853; and My Two Sisters (1854), to some acclaim, along with a memoir of her husband’s second wife in 1850.81

Eunice Hale Cobb, née Waite (27 January 1803–2 May 1880), born in Maine, lost her father aged five and was raised by her Calvinist grandparents. Her mother remarried when she was ten. In 1821, she published “The First Article” in the Boston Universalist Magazine, filling one quarter of the issue. That year, she began a diary, which she kept until she died. She married Rev. Sylvanus Cobb in 1822 and assisted in his ministry, also writing hymns and poems, settling eventually in Boston. Cobb contributed often to Universalist periodicals, both prose and verse; she also contributed to public welfare, via Sunday schools and temperance work for instance, and she attended the first Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. Cobb cofounded the Ladies’ Physiological Institute of Boston and was its first elected president. Her papers are at Radcliffe College.82

Margaret Coxe (1805–14 September 1855), born in New Jersey, educated herself at home in a good library. Coxe wrote several books, including The Young Lady’s Companion, Wonders of the Deep, and Botany of the Scriptures. Her book Claims of the Country on American Females was published in 1842, followed by Floral Emblems; or, Moral Sketches from Flowers in 1845. In 1843, Coxe founded the Cincinnati Female Seminary. In 1850, John Zachos became co-owner and principal of the seminary; in 1851, the two became co-owners and principals of the Cooper Female Institute in Dayton, Ohio.83

Hannah Mather Crocker (27 June 1752–11 July 1829), born in Massachusetts to the Mather family, was the niece of Thomas Hutchinson, last Governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony. In 1779, she married Joseph Crocker. The couple had ten children. Crocker founded St Anne’s Lodge, a fraternal lodge for women, for which she may have written the unpublished North Square Creed in 1787. She founded the School of Industry in 1812 to educate the female children of the Boston poor. In 1818, she published Observations on the Real Rights of Women, with Their Appropriate Duties, Agreeable to Scripture, Reason and Common Sense, the first book on the rights of women by an American; her Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston, describing the Revolutionary War, appeared in 2011. Her other works include A Series of Letters on Free Masonry and The School of Reform.84

Susan (Akin) Crowen [or Mrs T.J. Crowen] (1 September 1821–7 October 1870), born in New York, moved with her family to New York City as an infant. In 1839, she married Thomas J. Crowen. The couple had nine children. Crowen’s works include The Management of the Sick Room, with Rules for Diet Cookery, 1844; The American Lady’s System for Cookery, 1847; and Every Lady’s Book: an Instructor in the Art of Making Every Variety of Plain and Fancy Cakes, Pastry, Confectionary, Blanc Mange, Jellies, Ice Creams, also for the Cooking of Meats, Vegetables, &c. &c., 1848. Her cookbooks were reprinted throughout the 1850s and 1860s, and there are modern reprints.85

Eunice Powers Cutter (16 October 1819–10 May 1893), born in Massachusetts, lost her mother early. In 1843, she became precept of the Quaboag Seminary in Warren, marrying Calvin Cutter, a physician. Calvin published a university textbook, Anatomy and Physiology, in 1846, much reprinted before revision in 1848 and 1852 with Cutter’s help. Cutter published her own Human and Comparative Physiology, aimed at schoolchildren, in the early 1850s. Between 1848 and 1857, Cutter traveled with her husband and lectured to women’s groups throughout New England about health. The couple moved to Kansas in 1857 as friends of John Brown and campaigners for Kansas entering the Union as a free state. Cutter’s 1856 article “The Missouri River Pirates” was reprinted in The National Anti-Slavery Standard. In 1861, the Cutters returned to Massachusetts to work for the war effort and then to update their popular works.86

Lucretia Maria Davidson (27 September 1808–27 August 1825), born in New York, died of tuberculosis aged sixteen but left 278 poems of various lengths. Her work was praised by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Southey, and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, who wrote an ode to her. Southey wrote a study comparing her to Thomas Chatterton which helped her reputation, while Poe found her actual work less impressive than Southey’s mythmaking. Catherine Sedgwick wrote a biographical sketch which appeared in Davidson’s Poetical Remains. Davidson’s sister Margaret also wrote and also died young of consumption: the two were published together in 1850.87

Margaret Miller Davidson (26 March 1823–25 November 1838), born in New York, was Lucretia Davidson’s younger sister. Her work was edited by Washington Irving after her death from tuberculosis at age fifteen. Irving wrote Biography and Poetical Remains of the Late Margaret Miller Davidson in 1841; by 1864, the book had seen twenty editions. Poe preferred her work to her sister’s, admiring the long poem Lenore in particular.88

Mary Elizabeth Moragne Davis, née Moragne [or A Lady of South Carolina; M. E. Moragne] (1815–1903), born in South Carolina to a Huguenot planter family, began keeping a diary in 1834. In 1838, she published the prizewinning “The British Partizan” in the Augusta Mirror. The “Rencontre” followed in 1841, and “Joseph, a Scripture Sketch, in Three Parts,” a long piece of blank verse. That year, she withdrew a piece from the Mirror: “The Walsingham Family, or, A Mother’s Ambition.” In 1842, she married Rev. William Hervey Davis. In 1888, Davis published Lays from the Sunny Lands. In 1951, The Neglected Thread a Journal from the Calhoun Community, 1836–1842 appeared posthumously.89

Anna Peyre Dinnies, née Shackleford [or Moina] (7 February 1805–8 August 1886), born in South Carolina, was educated in a Charleston seminary. In 1830, she married John C. Dinnies and moved to St Louis, where John published the monthly St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal. In 1845 or 1849, the couple moved to New Orleans. In 1847, Dinnies published The Floral Year, Embellished with Bouquets of Flowers, Drawn and Colored from Nature. Each Flower illustrated with a Poem. Dinnies also published several poems in the press, both before and after marriage, among them “Chrysanthemum,” “The Wife,” “Wedded Love,” and “Love’s Messenger.” “The Conquered Banner” however was by another author using the pen name ‘Moina.’90

Mary Ann H. Dodd, later Shutts (5 March 1813–18 January 1878), born in Connecticut, was educated in Hartford at Mrs. Kinnear’s Seminary. Her first published articles appeared in 1834 in the Hermenethean, a Hartford college magazine. After 1835, she began contributing to The Ladies’ Repository in Boston and to the annual Rose of Sharon. A Universalist, Dodd often published in denominational journals. Her Poems appeared in 1843 or 1844, and Frederick Lee, or, The Christmas Present in 1847. In 1855, she married Henry Shutts.91

Sarah Mapps Douglass (9 September 1806–8 September 1882), born in Pennsylvania, attended college in the early 1820s and taught briefly in New York City. In 1825, she began teaching in Philadelphia; in 1833, after teaching briefly at the Free African School for Girls, she founded her own school for African American girls. In 1838, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society took over the school, retaining her as headmistress. In 1831, Douglass collected money for The Liberator, to which she also contributed; that year, she also helped found the Female Literary Association for African American women. As ‘Zillah’ and possibly ‘Sophonisba,’ Douglass also published in The Colored American and the Anglo-African Magazine. In 1833, Douglass co-founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, marrying William Douglass in 1855. Douglass was buried in an unmarked grave.92

Julia Louisa Dumont, née Corey (October 1794–2 January 1857), born in Ohio, lost her father as an infant. Her mother remarried and moved to New York. In 1811–1812, Dumont taught in schools in New York state. In 1812, she married John Dumont, later a candidate for Governor of Indiana. The couple moved to Indiana in 1814, where Dumont opened a school and contributed poetry to the Cincinnati Literary Gazette, including “Poverty,” “The Pauper to the Rich Man,” and “The Orphan Emigrant.” In 1834–1836, she wrote stories for the Cincinnati Mirror, winning two prizes. These and stories first appearing in the Western Literary Journal and The Ladies’ Repository appear in her 1856 volume Life Sketches from Common Paths: A Series of American Tales, published in New York City. Dumont lost five children early. She died of consumption in 1857.93

Elizabeth Jessup Eames, née Elizabeth Jessup [or Stella and Mrs. E. J. Eames] (26 June 1813-November 1856), born in New York, began publishing in 1831 as “Stella.” In 1834, the family moved to Illinois. Eames contributed regularly to the New Yorker, whose editor Horace Greeley was attached to her, and to the New-York Tribune, where Margaret Fuller was a friend. She also published in Graham’s Magazine and the Southern Literary Messenger; Edgar Allan Poe admired her work. In 1837, she married the Illinois farmer Walter S. Eames and the couple moved to New York. Walter drowned in 1851, and Eames died of consumption in 1856. A volume of her poems appeared before her death; she also appears in Rufus Griswold’s Female Poets of America. Her The Lost Shell Ballad appeared in 1858.94

Amanda Maria Corey Edmond [or A.M.E.] (24 October 1824–30 May 1862), born in Massachusetts, married James Edmond in 1844. Edmond wrote much of her work from age fourteen to twenty; in 1844, she published The Broken Vow and Other Poems, reviewed by Edgar Allan Poe for the Broadway Journal. That year also saw Willie Grant; or, The Little Pharisee; The Vase of Flowers: A Gift for the Young followed in 1846, Ralph Mobrey: or, The Child of Many Prayers in 1847 and Early Days: Pieces in Prose and Verse for the Young in 1848. Edmond went on to publish Forget Me Not: A Gift for Sabbath School Children in 1854, Religious and Other Poems in 1872, and a Memoir of Mrs. Sarah D. Comstock also in 1854.95

Elleanor Eldridge (26 March 1784/1785?-c. 1845), born in Rhode Island with Narragansett and African American ancestry, purchased a lot of land in Providence and there built a house, then a second property adjacent to it, worth about $4,000, on a $240 loan. Her creditor then died, whereupon his brother attached the property, sold it by the sheriff, and himself purchased it for the exact amount of the mortgage. Eldridge however was not a woman to submit quietly to such behavior. Assisted by the state Attorney General and some of the leading citizens of Providence, Eldridge campaigned to recover her property and lived there to old age. To finance her case, she wrote Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge in 1838, which sold several editions. A companion volume, Elleanor’s Second Book, was published in 1847.96

Elizabeth Fries Ellet, née Lummis (18 October 1818–3 June 1877), born in New York, studied modern languages at Aurora Female Seminary in Aurora, her first publication, aged sixteen, being a translation of Silvio Pellico. In 1835, she published Poems, Translated and Original, containing her tragedy Teresa Contarini, performed in New York City; she also married William Henry Ellet and the couple moved to South Carolina. In 1839, Ellet published The Characters of Schiller. Scenes in the Life of Joanna of Sicily and Rambles about the Country followed. Ellet published in the American Monthly, the North American Review, the Southern Literary Messenger, and elsewhere. In 1845, she returned to New York City and published The Women of the American Revolution. Ellet was involved in a scandal with Edgar Allan Poe and Frances Sargent Osgood, Ellet later implying that Poe was insane. Other books followed.97

Jane Evans Elliot, née Jane Smith Evans (7 April 1820–5 December 1886), born in North Carolina, married Alexander Elliot in 1847 and moved to Ellerslie Plantation. Elliot kept a diary from 1837–1882, describing her life from Antebellum to Reconstruction, including her views on slavery. The plantation was raided during Sherman’s march to Fayetteville, and Elliot lost a nephew at the Battle of Cold Harbor. Her diaries were published in 1908.98

Emma Catherine Embury, née Manley [or Ianthe] (25 February 1806–10 February 1863), born in New York City, was contributing verse and prose to the New York Mirror by the age of twenty. In 1828, she married Daniel Embury, a banker, and published her first volume of poetry: Guido, a Tale: Sketches from History and Other Poems, followed by her prose Pictures of Early Life in 1830. She was briefly lady co-editor for Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and was a salon regular alongside Anne Lynch Botta and Frances Sargent Osgood. Embury also published Constance Latimer: or, The Blind Girl, 1838; American Wild Flowers, 1845; and Glimpses of Home Life and The Waldorf Family, both in 1848. In later life, Embury was an invalid and withdrew from society. Poems of Emma C. Embury and Prose Writings of Emma C. Embury appeared posthumously in 1869 and 1893.99

Eliza Farnham (17 November 1815–15 December 1864), born in New York, moved to Illinois in 1835 and there married Thomas J. Farnham in 1836. The couple returned to New York in 1841. In 1843, Farnham wrote a series for Brother Jonathan refuting the call for women’s suffrage. In 1844, thanks to Horace Greeley and others, she was appointed matron of the women’s ward at Sing Sing Prison, though she resigned amid controversy in 1848. Moving to Boston, she there helped manage the Institution for the Blind. From 1849–1856, Farnham was in California, thereafter spending time on both coasts assisting destitute emigrants. She published Life in the Prairie Land, 1846; California, In-Doors and Out, 1856; My Early Days, 1859; Woman and Her Era, 1864; and The Ideal Attained: Being the Story of Two Steadfast Souls, 1865. She was an atheist.100

Eliza Ware Farrar, née Rotch (12 July 1791–22 April 1870), born in Dunkirk, France, left for England as a child due to the French Revolution. The family lost everything and sent her to her grandparents in Massachusetts. Here, she joined the Friends Meeting but was later disowned for her liberal views. In 1828, she married John Farrar, a Harvard professor. Farrar published actively in Boston from 1830–1837: The Children’s Robinson Crusoe, 1830; The Story of the Life of Lafayette, 1831; John Howard, 1833; Youth’s Letter-Writer, 1834; The Adventures of Congo in Search of his Master, 1835; and The Young Lady’s Friend, 1836. Recollections of Seventy Years followed in 1866. Farrar also wrote the manuscript Memorials of the Life of Elizabeth Rotch, Being the Recollections of a Mother, by her Daughter, Eliza Farrar, now in the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Her correspondence also survives.101

Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper (17 April 1813–31 December 1894), born in New York, studied in Europe while traveling with her family. Daughter of the writer James Fenimore Cooper, she later served as his amanuensis. Cooper published various works: Elinor Wyllys—A Tale, 1845; Rural Hours, 1850; The Lumley Autograph, 1851, a satirical essay; Mt. Vernon: A Letter to the Children of America, 1859; Female Suffrage: A Letter to the Christian Women of America, 1870; and Rhyme and Reason of Country Life, 1885. Cooper also edited John Leonard Knapp’s Country Rambles in England; or, Journal of a Naturalist, 1853. Cooper was a gifted artist and perhaps did the plates for Rural Hours, a book which influenced Darwin and Thoreau. She was active in charity work, 1868–1886, founding a Cooperstown orphanage in 1873.102

Eliza Lee Cabot Follen (15 August 1787–26 January 1860), born in Massachusetts to the Cabot family, lost her mother in 1809 and her father in 1819, after which she headed the household. She married Charles Follen in 1828; he died in 1840. Follen founded a Sunday school and edited two Sunday school periodicals, the Christian Teacher’s Manual, 1828–1830, and the Child’s Friend, 1843–1850. She published The Well-Spent Hour, 1827, Selections from Fénelon, 1829, The Sceptic, 1835, Sketches of Married Life, 1838, Poems, 1839, The works of Charles Follen, with a Memoir of his Life, 5 vols, 1846, The Lark and the Linnet, 1854, To Mothers in the Free States and Anti-Slavery Hymns and Songs, 1855, Little Songs, 1856, Twilight Stories, 1858, and Home Dramas, 1859. Follen was a zealous abolitionist. She wrote several Universalist hymns and translated from French and German, including fairy tales.103

Sarah Margaret Fuller (23 May 1810–19 July 1850), born in Massachusetts, became known in her thirties as the best-read person in New England. Her first journal article was in 1834. Her father died in 1835 and Fuller took work teaching in Boston, then Providence, holding her first Conversation in 1839. That year, Ralph Waldo Emerson asked her to edit The Dial, which she did from 1840–1842. She published Summer on the Lakes in 1844 and Woman in the Nineteenth Century in 1845, considered the first major feminist work in the United States. In 1844, Fuller moved to New York as a critic, then editor, for Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune, publishing over 250 columns. In 1846, Fuller was sent to Italy as a war correspondent, meeting Giuseppe Mazzini and Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, with whom she had a son. The family drowned in 1850 with Fuller’s manuscript history of the Roman Republic. Posthumous works followed.104

Anna Rosina Kliest Gambold (1 May 1762–1821), born in Pennsylvania, was head teacher in Bethlehem’s Seminary for Young Ladies from 1788–1805. In 1805, she married John Gambold and moved to Georgia to evangelize among the Cherokee people, establishing a school. In 1819, Gambold published an article in the American Journal of Science and Arts on the use of flowers in Cherokee medicine. Their Moravian mission was shuttered by the United States government when removing the Cherokee from their ancestral lands. Gambold kept a mission diary, published in 2007. She died and was buried at the mission cemetery.105

Sarah Ann Haynsworth Gayle, née Haynsworth or Haynesworth (18 January 1804–30 July 1835), born in South Carolina, moved to Claiborne, Alabama as a child with her family. In 1819, she married John Gayle, who later became Governor of Alabama. She died of lockjaw following a dental operation, leaving a journal for the years 1827–1835 which the Encyclopedia of Alabama calls “unique as the only surviving account of early Alabama life written by a woman.”106

Caroline Howard Gilman [or Mrs. Clarissa Packard] (8 October 1794–15 September 1888), born in Massachusetts, lost her parents young and grew up with older siblings. Her first published poem, “Jephtha’s Rash Vow,” was at age sixteen; another appeared in 1817 in the North American Review. In 1819, she married Rev. Samuel Gilman, who later wrote Harvard’s alma mater. The couple moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he served as Unitarian pastor from 1819–1858. In 1832, Gilman launched The Rosebud, a juvenile weekly paper, then The Southern Rose, containing instructions for young slaveholders and critical reviews of abolitionist literature. Recollections of a New England Housekeeper appeared here in 1835, then Recollections of a Southern Matron in 1836. Other works include Poetry of Traveling in the United States, 1838; Tales and Ballads, 1839; and Ruth Raymond, 1840, to some success.107

Abba Goddard [or A. A. G., A. A. Goddard, and A. G. A.] (20 July 1819–26 November 1873), born in Connecticut, moved to Lowell, Massachusetts with her family in 1834, where her father worked at the Lowell Machine Shop. An 1845 list of authors in the Lowell Offering credits her; it was widely read by the Lowell Mill Girls. In 1846, The Trojan Sketchbook of Troy, New York, featured Goddard as editor and contributor of the essay “Legend of the Poestenkill,” a love story between a Mohawk man and a Dutch settler. During the Civil War, Goddard served as a nurse for wounded soldiers in Portland, Maine and wrote about the war in the Portland newspaper, traveling 600 miles to help the wounded and raising donations on their behalf.108

Eliza Anderson Godefroy [or Beatrice Ironside] (?–2 October 1839), born in Maryland, married Henry Anderson in 1799. He had abandoned Anderson and their daughter by 1801. In 1805, she traveled to Europe, vainly attempting to convince Napoleon to recognize a marriage between her friend Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte and his youngest brother Jérôme-Napoléon. Returning to Baltimore, Anderson joined the Companion and Weekly Miscellany, becoming editor in 1806. Her contributions are hidden by pseudonyms. In 1806, she launched a new magazine, The Observer, first anonymously, then using the pen name ‘Beatrice Ironside’ and addressing the novelty of a female editor directly. Histories have overlooked her role. In 1807, her translation of Sophie Cottin’s Claire d’Albe brought renewed attacks, and she decided to close the journal. In 1808, she married Maximilian Godefroy, moving to France in 1819.109

Hannah Flagg Gould (3 September 1789–5 September 1865), born in Massachusetts, kept house early for her father, a Revolutionary War veteran perhaps referenced in some of her poems: “The Scar of Lexington,” “The Veteran and the Child,” and so forth. Her poems appeared in various periodicals and in subsequent collections: Poems, 1832; Esther: A Scriptural Narrative, 1835; Poems, 3 vols, 1836; The Golden Vase, a Gift for the Young, 1843; Gathered Leaves and Miscellaneous Papers, 1846; New Poems, 1850; The Diosma: a Perennial, 1851; The Youth’s Coronal, 1851; The Mother’s Dream, and other Poems, 1853; Hymns and Other Poems for Children, 1854; and Poems for Little Ones, 1863. Gould was much recited by schoolchildren. A standout poem is “A Name in the Sand.”110

Rebecca Gratz (4 March 1781–27 August 1869), born in Pennsylvania, was an active member of Philadelphia’s first synagogue. Her father descended from a long line of Silesian rabbis. In 1801, Gratz helped establish the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances, for families of war veterans. In 1815, she helped found the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum, remaining its secretary for forty years. She founded a Hebrew Sunday school in 1838 and presided until 1864. In 1819, Gratz co-founded the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society of Philadelphia, acting as secretary for almost four decades. In 1850, in The Occident, she proposed a Jewish foster home, which was founded in 1855. She may be the model for Walter Scott’s Rebecca in Ivanhoe, thanks to their mutual friend Washington Irving.111

Jane Lewers Gray (1796–18 November 1871), born in Northern Ireland, was educated at a Moravian Seminary before marrying the Presbyterian Rev. John Gray and sailing with him to Bermuda in 1820. After eighteen months in New Brunswick, the couple moved to New York City, then Easton, Pennsylvania, where he ministered for 45 years. Gray’s hymn, “Hark to the Solemn Bell,” appeared in the Presbyterian Collection of Psalms and Hymns of 1843; other hymns and poems appeared at home or abroad, “Sabbath Reminiscences” appearing in England. A posthumous volume of Selections from the Poetical Writings of Jane Lewers Gray was printed for private distribution in New York in 1872.112

Mary Griffith, née Corré (1772–1846), was born in France, her father emigrating to the United States in 1776 and doing well in business in New York City. Corré married John Griffith, who died in 1815. She began publishing short stories in the New York press. In 1820, Griffith purchased an estate in New Jersey and became interested in the natural sciences, publishing her results in scientific and literary journals. Her works included Our Neighborhood, or Letters on Horticulture and Natural Phenomena, 1831; Camperdown, or News from Our Neighborhood and Discoveries in Light and Vision, both 1836; The Two Defaulters, 1842; and Three Hundred Years Hence, published in 1950 but originally in Camperdown and the first known utopian novel by an American woman.113

Sarah Moore Grimké (26 November 1792–23 December 1873), born in South Carolina, is often regarded as the mother of the women’s suffrage movement. From age twelve, Grimké taught Sunday school to the plantation slaves but was prevented from teaching them to read, a law she defied. Grimké became a Quaker after moving to Philadelphia in 1821, campaigning for abolition and the female vote. In 1827, Grimké went to Charleston to “save” her sister; Angelina converted and moved to Philadelphia in 1829, both reaching thousands on the abolitionist and suffragist circuit. Finding that her brother had three mixed-race sons, Grimké adopted them and sent them to Harvard and Princeton. Grimké also published An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, 1836, and Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, 1838. She then ceased public speaking until 1861, when she campaigned for President Lincoln.114

Angelina Emily Grimké Weld (20 February 1805–26 October 1879), born in South Carolina, was the younger sister of Sarah Moore Grimké, the two living together as adults until Angelina married the abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld in 1838. In Charleston in 1829, Angelina called on her Presbyterian church to condemn slavery and was expelled. That year, she left for the North, never seeing Charleston or her mother again. In 1835, William Lloyd Garrison published Weld’s letter to him in The Liberator, amid Quaker controversy. In 1836, Weld’s An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South was publicly burned in South Carolina. In 1837, the sisters joined the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. Weld published Letters to Catharine Beecher in 1838, then Letters on the Province of Woman, facing an arsonist pro-slavery mob that year in Philadelphia. The sisters’ American Slavery as It Is appeared in 1839.115

Harriet Ward Sanborn Grosvenor (22 January 1823–7 September 1863), born in New Hampshire, married Edwin Prescott Grosvenor in 1843 and moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts. Grosvenor published fifteen books: My Sister Emily, 1847; A Sabbath in My Early Home, 1850; Unfading Flowers, 1851; The Little Word No: Or, Indecision of Character, 1853; Agnes Thornton: Or, School Duties and Helen Spencer: Or, Home Duties, both 1854; Right and Wrong, 1855; Ellen Dacre, 1858; Capt. Russel’s Watchword and Life’s Lessons, 1859; The Old Red House, The Drunkard’s Daughter, and Blind Ethan, A Story for Boys, all 1860; Why the Mill Was Stopped, 1861; Climbing the Mountain, 1862; and Noonday: A Life Sketch, 1863. After her husband’s death in 1856, Grosvenor supported her family by writing. She also wrote hymns and broadsides.116