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…
“What a pity it is that one can't have a separate language with which to address each beloved one!”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
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
