Lillie Devereux Blake

19th Century Author and Women's Rights Activist

Lillie Devereux Blake was a leading feminist and reformer, as well as a prominent fiction writer, journalist, essayist and lecturer, who worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for women's suffrage (the right to vote).

She was born Elizabeth Johnson Devereux on August 12, 1833 to planters George Pollock Devereux and Sarah Elizabeth Johnson Devereux in Raleigh, North Carolina, but spent much of her early childhood on a plantation in Roanoke, Virginia. It was George Devereux who called his daughter Lily because of her fair complexion, and she continued through life as Lillie.

Read More

Caroline Dall

Author and Women's Rights Activist

Caroline Wells Healey Dall was an author, journalist, lecturer and champion of women's rights. A feminist and Unitarian Church liberal, Dall played a significant role in the antislavery movement and as spokesperson for woman's access to education and employment.

Caroline Healey was born on June 22, 1822, the oldest of eight children born to wealthy Bostonians, Mark and Caroline Foster Healey. Her father was a successful merchant, banker and investor in railroads who taught 18-month-old Caroline to pick out letters from the large type on the front page of the Christian Register.

Read More

Eliza Farnham

Author and California Pioneer

Eliza Farnham (1815-1864) was an author, feminist, lecturer, activist for prison reform, and early proponent of the superiority of women. In her day, Farnham was once one of the most highly praised women nonfiction authors in the United States. She made national headlines with her writings and was at the vanguard of several social and political movements of her time, including abolitionism, women's rights and Spiritualism. Farnham's reform work was also her career and a matter of financial necessity throughout her life.

Childhood and Early Years
Eliza Burhans was born on November 17, 1815 in the Hudson Valley town of Rensselaerville, New York, the daughter of Cornelius and Mary Wood Burhans. Eliza's mother died in 1820, after which five-year-old Eliza was separated from her father and siblings and exiled to a rural community in western New York State. There she was placed in the home of the Warrens, a childless couple.

Read More

Martha Finley

Author of the Elsie Dinsmore Novels

Martha Finley (1828-1909) was a teacher and author of the well known the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series of novels which were published over a span of 38 years. Her Presbyterian upbringing was the source of inspiration for her life's work, especially in the Elsie books. For over forty years she sold more books than any other juvenile author, besides Louisa May Alcott.

Martha Finley was born in Chillicothe, Ohio on April 26, 1828, the daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and Maria Theresa Brown Finley. The Finleys were of Scotch-Irish heritage, with deep roots in the Presbyterian Church. Martha's grandfather, Samuel Finley, served in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and was a personal friend of President George Washington.

Read More

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Anglo American Novelist and Playwright

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) was an British American playwright and author. She is best known for her children's stories, in particular Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911). Her status as a divorced woman writer supporting her family with her earnings pushed the boundaries of what was considered 'a woman's place' in 19th century society.

Childhood and Early Years
Frances Eliza Hodgson was born on November 24, 1849 in Cheetham, near Manchester, England, the third of five children of Eliza Boond Hodgson and Edwin Hodgson, who owned a business selling quality ironmongery and brass goods. Frances was the middle of the five Hodgson children, with two older brothers and two younger sisters.

Read More

Abigail Scott Duniway

Champion for Women's Right to Vote

Abigail Scott Duniway (1834–1915) was a true pioneer who rose from simple beginnings as an Illinois farm girl to become a nationally known champion of women's suffrage in the Pacific Northwest, as well as a significant author, and editor and publisher of a pro-women's rights newspaper.

Well-read, well-informed, and interested in public issues, Duniway was particularly concerned about women's economic plight. She fought for a woman's right to own property in her own name and to secure that property from her husband and his creditors. She objected to the moral double standard, early marriages of young girls, and debilitating 'excessive maternity.'

Read More

E.D.E.N. Southworth

Most Popular Novelist of the Late 19th Century

E.D.E.N. Southworth (1819-1899) was the author of more than 60 novels and was the most widely read American novelist of last half of the 19th century. She invariably signed herself Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, though she began writing in 1844 to support herself and her children after Mr. Southworth deserted her four years into their marriage.

Born in Washington, DC in 1819, she was christened Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte. Supposedly on his deathbed, her father, Captain Charles LeCompte Nevitte, persuaded a local priest to re-christen little Emma with two additional names so that her initials would spell out E.D.E.N. The acronym was well-suited to the novelist-to-be and she used it throughout her career.

Read More

Constance Fenimore Woolson

Pioneer Novelist and Short Story Writer

Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894) was a novelist and short story writer, and grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, her mother's uncle. The settings of her writing included what was then the frontier of the Great Lakes region, Florida and the Reconstruction South. Before she was forty Woolson lost almost everyone in her large family; she then moved to Europe where she lived and wrote for the rest of her life.

Using her powers of keen observation, Woolson recorded both her natural surroundings and the customs of the people she encountered. She wrote travel sketches, poems and a children's novel under the pseudonym Anne March, as well as a novella, four novels and more than fifty short stories for the major literary magazines of the nineteenth century.

Read More

Lucy Larcom

One of the First Lowell Mill Girls

Lucy Larcom (1824–1893) was an American poet and one of the Lowell Mill girls. Although Larcom was a well-published poet in her lifetime, she is best known today for writing A New England Girlhood (1889). This autobiography is a classic book about the age of industrialization and her role in it as a textile mill worker in Lowell, Massachusetts – beginning at age eleven.

Lucy Larcom was born on March 5, 1824 in the coastal village of Beverly, Massachusetts, the ninth of ten children born to Benjamin and Lois Barrett Larcom. Lucy's life was greatly affected when her father, a retired sea captain, died when she was eight. The fate of widows with large families was often uncertain, and from then on, Lois Larcom struggled financially.

Read More

Ann Stephens

Writer and Magazine Editor in the Civil War Era

During the mid-nineteenth century, Ann Stephens (1810-1886) enjoyed a long, lucrative career as one of America's best known and most respected women writers. In addition to serving as editor for six popular magazines for more than twenty-six years, she wrote some forty-five works of fiction and manuals on the domestic arts. Stephens was one of the first generation of women to assert themselves as professional writers, entering the literary field for the sake of earning a living.

Read More

Alice Cary

Poet and Novelist in the Civil War Era

Alice Cary (1820-1871) was a poet and author, and the sister of poet Phoebe Cary (1824–1871), who would become Alice's lifelong companion. Alice Cary's strong desire to be independent and to forge her own literary career prompted her to move alone to New York City at age 30. Cary was a most unusual 19th century woman who earned her own money, owned her own home and ran her own life - a true pioneer on many levels. A prolific writer, she ruined her health by the constant need to express herself.

Alice Cary was born on April 26, 1820 on a farm in Hamilton County, Ohio, eight miles north of Cincinnati. This was then considered the western frontier of the United States. After returning home from the War of 1812, Robert Cary had purchased from his uncle 27 acres of land, which he called Clovernook Farm. In 1814 he built a three-room frame house for his family, which was the birthplace of Alice and Phoebe Cary.

Read More

Emily Dickinson

One of the Top Women Poets in the United States

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is considered the most original 19th century American poet. She is noted for her unconventional broken rhyming meter and use of dashes and random capitalization as well as her creative use of metaphor and overall innovative style. She was a deeply sensitive woman who explored her own spirituality, in poignant, deeply personal poetry, revealing her keen insight into the human condition.

Emily the Daughter
Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was the second child born to Emily Norcross and Edward Dickinson, a Yale graduate, successful lawyer and United States Congressman. While Emily described her father in a warm manner, her correspondence suggests that her mother was cold and aloof. Emily and her family lived with her grandfather Samuel Dickinson and his family in Amherst. In 1840 the Dickinsons moved to North Pleasant Street.

Read More

Fanny Fern

Journalist and Novelist in the Civil War Era

American writer Fanny Fern (1811-1872), born Sarah Willis, was the first woman newspaper columnist. By 1855, Fern was the highest-paid columnist in the United States, commanding $100 per week for her New York Ledger column. Her best-known work, novel Ruth Hall (1854), was based on her life - the years of happiness she had with her first husband, the poverty she endured after he died, the lack of help from her male relatives, and her struggle to achieve financial independence as a journalist.

She was born Sarah Payson Willis on July 9, 1811 in Portland, Maine to Nathaniel Willis and Hannah Parker Willis; she was the fifth of nine children. At an early age she moved with her family to Boston, where her father became the editor of two Boston newspapers.

Read More

Rebecca Harding Davis

Writer and Novelist in the Civil War Era

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) was an American journalist and author, and a pioneer of realistic fiction, more than two decades before the height of American literary realism. Her most important work, the novella Life in the Iron Mills, was published in the April 1861 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, which quickly made her an established female writer. Throughout her lifetime, Davis sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants and the working class by writing about the plight of these marginalized groups.

Rebecca Blaine Harding was born on June 24, 1831, the oldest of five children of Richard and Rachel Wilson Harding. The couple lived in Huntsville, Alabama; yet, Rachel traveled to her sister's home in Washington, Pennsylvania, to deliver Rebecca. In 1837, when Rebecca was six, the Harding family moved to Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia).

Read More

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Writer and Novelist in the Civil War Era

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844-1911) was an American author and an early advocate of clothing reform, urging women to burn their corsets. She wrote fifty-seven volumes of fiction, poetry and essays. In 1868 Phelps' story "The Tenth of January" about a tragic fire that killed scores of girls at the Pemberton Mill in Lawrence, MA established her reputation as a writer, and her novel The Gates Ajar became a national bestseller.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was born Mary Gray Phelps in Boston on August 31, 1844, to Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps and Reverend Austin Phelps. Her father was pastor of the Pine Street Congregational Church until 1848, when he accepted a position as the Chair of Rhetoric at Andover Theological Seminary and moved the family to Boston.

Read More

Susan Wallace

Poet and Writer in the Civil War Era

Susan Arnold Elston Wallace was an American author and poet who wrote six books that were published in her lifetime: The Storied Sea (1883), Ginevra (1887), The Land of the Pueblos (1888), The Repose in Egypt (1888), Along the Bosphorus and Other Sketches (1898) and The City of the King (1903). The wife of author and Civil War General Lew Wallace, she completed his autobiography after his death.

Childhood and Early Years
Susan Arnold Elston was born on December 25, 1830 in Crawfordsville, Indiana to wealthy and influential parents, Isaac Compton and Maria Eveline (Aken) Elston. Susan had eight siblings, three brothers and five sisters. In 1835, Isaac Elston built an impressive, two-story brick mansion for his family on a forty-acre tract of ground known as Elston Grove.

Read More

Alice James

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Biography

Born into a wealthy and intellectually active family - sister of novelist Henry James and psychologist and philosopher William James - Alice James soon developed the psychological and physical problems that would end her life at age 43. Alice never married and lived with her parents until their deaths. She is known mainly for the diary she kept in her final years.

Read More

Fanny Kemble

British-American Actress and Abolitionist

Fanny Kemble (1809-1893) was a famous British actress prior to her marriage to slaveholder Pierce Mease Butler, grandson of Founding Father Pierce Butler. She was an independent and highly intelligent woman who set out on a two-year theatrical tour in America in 1832. Kemble had no idea how much her life would be affected by the institution of slavery in America.

Image: Fanny Kemble in 1834
By Thomas Sully

Frances Anne Kemble was born on November 27, 1809, in London, England. From one of England's most prominent family of actors, her aunt was noted actress Sarah Siddons and her father, Charles Kemble, the renowned Shakespearean actor. Due to the financial trouble of her father's Covent Garden Theatre in London, Fanny began acting to support her family, making her theatrical debut as Juliet at age 19. Her attractive personality made her a great favorite, enabling her father to recoup his losses as a manager.

Read More

Elizabeth Meriwether

Writer and Women's Rights Activist

Elizabeth Avery Meriwether (1824–1916) was a Tennessee author and publisher. Because of her vocal opposition to the Union Army, General William Tecumseh Sherman ordered her to leave Memphis in December 1862. Meriwether was also a prominent activist in the women's suffrage movement, and is depicted in a life-size bronze statue in the Women's Suffrage Memorial in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Image: Tennesee Woman's Suffrage Memorial
This monument by Alan LeQuire depicts (left to right) Lizzie Crozier French, Anne Dallas Dudley and Elizabeth Meriwether, representing East, Middle and West Tennessee respectively. The statue was dedicated on August 26, 2006 in Knoxville's Market Square.

Childhood and Early Years
Elizabeth Avery was born in Bolivar, Tennessee, on January 19, 1824. Financial problems led the family to move to Memphis around 1835. In her autobiography, Elizabeth reveals little about her childhood other than to note that her family moved to Memphis when she was eleven. It is obvious, however, that she was well educated.

Read More

Elizabeth Oakes Smith

Writer and Women's Rights Activist

Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893) was a poet, novelist, editor, lecturer and women's rights activist whose career spanned six decades. Today Smith is best known for her feminist writings, including "Woman and Her Needs," a series of essays published in the New York Tribune between 1850 and 1851 that argued for women's equal rights to political and economic opportunities, including the right to vote and access to higher education.

Elizabeth Oakes Prince was born August 12, 1806, near North Yarmouth, Maine, to David and Sophia Blanchard Prince. After her father died at sea in 1808, her family lived with her maternal and paternal grandparents until her mother remarried and moved with her stepfather to Cape Elizabeth near the south coast of Maine, where she spent much time even after the family moved to Portland when she was eight.

Read More