Helen Hunt Jackson, born Helen Maria Fiske on 15 October 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and dead on 12 August 1885 in San Francisco, California, lived a life shaped by literary ambition, devastating bereavement, restless travel, and an increasingly fierce commitment to justice for Native peoples. She achieved wide fame in her own century as a poet, essayist, travel writer, novelist, and public intellectual. Today sh…
“As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough—I wrote faster than I would write a letter—two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder
On a spring day in 1823, in the small coastal village of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a child was born who would grow to become one of the most original and underappreciated voices in nineteenth-century American literature. Elizabeth Drew Barstow entered the world on May 6, in a town where the rhythms of the sea shaped daily existence and where salt spray and shipbuilding defined the community's character. The second…
“In reading such books I am reminded of what I have thought my mission was: a crusade against Duty—not the duty that is revealed to every man and woman of us by the circumstances of daily life, but that which is cut and fashioned for us by minds totally ignorant of our idiosyncrasies and necessities.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality
