Alice Cary
Encyclopedia
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, and the sister of fellow poet Phoebe Cary
Phoebe Cary
Phoebe Cary was an American poet, and the younger sister of poet Alice Cary . The sisters co-published poems in 1849, and then each went on to publish volumes of her own...
(1824–1871).
Biography
Mount Healthy, Ohio
Mount Healthy is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky metropolitan area. The population was 7,149 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Mount Healthy is located at ....
near Cincinnati
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
. Her parents lived on a farm bought by Robert Cary in 1813 in what is now North College Hill, Ohio
North College Hill, Ohio
North College Hill is a city in Hamilton County in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio approximately ten miles north of downtown Cincinnati. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 9,397...
. He called the 27 acres (109,265.2 m²) Clovernook
Clovernook
Clovernook Farm was the family home of poets Alice and Phoebe Cary in what is now North College Hill, Ohio. The farm was once part of a 1 million acre tract of Springfield Township that was purchased in 1787 by John Cleves Symmes, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and a pioneer in...
Farm. The farm was 10 miles (16.1 km) north of Cincinnati, a good distance from schools, and the father could not afford to give their large family of nine children a very good education. But Alice and her sister Phoebe
Phoebe Cary
Phoebe Cary was an American poet, and the younger sister of poet Alice Cary . The sisters co-published poems in 1849, and then each went on to publish volumes of her own...
were fond of reading and studied all they could.
While the sisters were raised in a Universalist household and held political and religious views that were liberal and reformist, they often attended Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist services and were friendly with ministers of all these denominations and others. According to Phoebe,
When Alice was 17 and Phoebe 13, they began to write verses, which were printed in newspapers. Their mother had died in 1835, and two years afterward their father married again. The stepmother was wholly unsympathetic regarding the literary aspirations of Alice and Phoebe. For their part, while the sisters were ready and while willing to aid to the full extent of their strength in household labor, they persisted in a determination to study and write when the day's work was done. Sometimes they were refused the use of candles to the extent of their wishes, and the device of a saucer of lard with a bit of rag for a wick was their only light after the rest of the family had retired.
Alice's first major poem, "The Child of Sorrow," was published in 1838 and was praised by influential critics including Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, Rufus Wilmot Griswold
Rufus Wilmot Griswold
Rufus Wilmot Griswold was an American anthologist, editor, poet, and critic. Born in Vermont, Griswold left home when he was 15 years old. He worked as a journalist, editor, and critic in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere. He built up a strong literary reputation, in part due to his 1842...
, and Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery...
. Alice and her sister were included in the influential anthology The Female Poets of America prepared by Rufus Griswold. Griswold encouraged publishers to put forth a collection of the sisters' poetry, even asking John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...
to provide a preface. Whittier refused, believing their poetry did not need his endorsement, and also noting a general dislike for prefaces as a method to "pass off by aid of a known name, what otherwise would not pass current". In 1849, a Philadelphia publisher accepted the book, Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary, and Griswold wrote the preface, left unsigned. By the spring of 1850, Alice and Griswold were often corresponding through letters which were often flirtatious. This correspondence ended by the summer of that year.
The anthology made Alice and Phoebe well-known, and in 1850 they moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where they devoted themselves to writing, and garnered much fame. There, they also hosted receptions on Sunday evenings which drew notable figures including P. T. Barnum
P. T. Barnum
Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman, scam artist and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus....
, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement...
, John Greenleaf Whittier, Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery...
, Bayard Taylor
Bayard Taylor
Bayard Taylor was an American poet, literary critic, translator, and travel author.-Life and work:...
and his wife, Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard, Robert Dale Owen
Robert Dale Owen
Robert Dale Owen was a longtime exponent in his adopted United States of the socialist doctrines of his father, Robert Owen, as well as a politician in the Democratic Party.-Biography:...
, Oliver Johnson, Mary E. Dodge, Mrs. Croly, Mrs. Victor, Edwin H. Chapin, Henry M. Field, Charles F. Deems, Samuel Bowles
Samuel Bowles
Samuel Bowles may refer to:*Samuel Bowles *Samuel Bowles...
, Thomas B. Aldrich, Anna E. Dickinson, George Ripley, Madame Le Vert, Henry Wilson, Justin McCarthy; in short, all the noted contemporary names in the different departments of literature and art might fairly be added to the list.
Alice wrote for the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Putnam's Magazine
Putnam's Magazine
Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art was a monthly periodical published by G. P. Putnam's Sons featuring American literature and articles on science, art, and politics...
, the New York Ledger, the Independent, and other literary periodicals. Her articles, whether prose or poetry, were gathered subsequently into volumes which were received well in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and abroad. She also wrote novels and poems which did not make their first appearance in periodicals. Among her prose works were The Clovernook Children and Snow Berries, a Book for Young Folks.
Alice died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in 1871 in New York at age 51. The pallbearers at her funeral included P. T. Barnum and Horace Greeley. Her burial is in the Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County , New York. It was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2006 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.-History:...
, Brooklyn, New York.
Further reading
- Mary C. AmesMary C. AmesMary Clemmer Ames American author was born to Abraham Clemmer and Margaret Kneale in Utica, New York. On 7 May 1851 she married the Rev. Daniel Ames, from whom she was divorced in 1874...
, Memorials of Alice and Phœbe Cary (twenty-sixth edition, 1885)
