Alice Cary was born on 26 April 1820 in Mount Healthy, Ohio, then a small rural community north of Cincinnati, and died in New York City on 12 February 1871. During her lifetime she became one of the most widely read American women poets of the nineteenth century, as well as a successful novelist, sketch writer, editor, lecturer, and literary hostess. Her name was once familiar in households that memorized poems, san…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Alice Cary
Poet B
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 61%
Poems 83%
Blended 71%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 May 1803 and dead in Concord, Massachusetts, on 27 April 1882, became one of the defining voices of nineteenth-century American literature. He was at once a poet, essayist, lecturer, editor, religious dissenter, and public moralist, though no single title entirely contains him. His greatest influence lay in his ability to make philosophical inquiry sound urgen…
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
In time
Alice Cary
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803
1882
They overlapped for 52 years (1820–1871).
When Alice Cary was born, Ralph Waldo Emerson was about 17.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was about 68 when Alice Cary died.
On the map
About 1,186 km separate Mount Healthy, Ohio, USA from Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
social
religious
Alice Cary: mount healthy, new york city, phoebe cary, the female poets of america, poems of alice and phoebe cary, clovernook, hagar: a story of to-day, nearer home. Ralph Waldo Emerson: boston, concord, nature, transcendentalism, william emerson, mary moody emerson, ellen louisa tucker, lydia jackson.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Alice Cary
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emotional landscapes
Alice Cary: Irony, Sorrow, Wonder. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Wonder, Spirituality, Peace.