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…
“Alice, after I am gone take good care of Dick, and, for Heaven’s sake, go out and buy him a couple of new shirts.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality
