Elizabeth Prentiss, born Elizabeth Payson on 26 October 1818 in Portland, Maine, and dead on 13 August 1878 in Dorset, Vermont, belonged to that important company of nineteenth-century American women whose literary influence was felt most deeply in homes, churches, and private devotional reading rather than in the official institutions of literary prestige. She was a poet, hymn writer, novelist, teacher, minister’s w…
“I have an insatiable curiosity about even the outer life of those I love; and of the inner one you can not say too much.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Tenderness
Sarah Doudney was born on 15 January 1841 in Portsea, Hampshire, at a time when the crowded naval and commercial communities around Portsmouth were expanding alongside Victorian Britain’s confidence in trade, empire, religion, and print. She was the daughter of a soap and candle manufacturer, and the practical details of that background matter. Although later summaries have sometimes simplified it into a “working-cla…
“If you set out to do a good deed, you may do a hundred small kindnesses on the way.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
