Caroline May (born Croydon, England c. 1820; died March 5, 1895) was an English-American poet, editor, and literary critic.
May's family came to the United States in 1834 when her father, Edward Harrison May Sr., accepted a position as pastor of a Dutch Reformed church in New York City. She began to publish poems, at first under the pseudonym Caromaia. [1] In 1848 she edited American Female Poets, With Biographical and Critical Notices, which collected poems and information on many female American poets of the day. Several similar works were published in the same year, and a literary feud ensued between May and Rufus Griswold, the editor of Female Poets of America. She later edited several other anthologies and at least three collections of her poetry. After the death of her father in Philadelphia in 1853 she lived in Pelham, New York, where she taught at the Priory School for Girls. [2]
Her younger brother Edward Harrison May Jr. was a notable painter who spent most of his life in Paris.
Richard Henry Stoddard was an American critic and poet.
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 a strong literary reputation, in part due to his 1842 collection The Poets and Poetry of America. This anthology, the most comprehensive of its time, included what he deemed the best examples of American poetry. He produced revised versions and similar anthologies for the remainder of his life, although many of the poets he promoted have since faded into obscurity. Many writers hoped to have their work included in one of these editions, although they commented harshly on Griswold's abrasive character. Griswold was married three times: his first wife died young, his second marriage ended in a public and controversial divorce, and his third wife left him after the previous divorce was almost repealed.
Mary Howitt was an English poet, the author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly. She translated several tales by Hans Christian Andersen. Some of her works were written in conjunction with her husband, William Howitt. Many, in verse and prose, were intended for young people.
Caroline Howard Gilman was an American author. Her writing career spanned 70 years and included poems, novels, and essays.
Henry Abbey was an American poet who is best remembered for the poem, "What do we plant when we plant a tree?" He is also known for "The Bedouin's Rebuke".
Elizabeth Oakes Smith was an American poet, fiction writer, editor, lecturer, and women's rights activist whose career spanned six decades, from the 1830s to the 1880s. Most well-known at the start of her professional career for her poem "The Sinless Child", which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1842, her reputation today rests on 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 spiritual and intellectual capacities as well as women's equal rights to political and economic opportunities, including the franchise and higher education.
Emma Catherine Embury was an American writer and poet. Under the pen name of "Ianthe", she contributed to the periodicals of the day, and may be considered among the pioneers of female literature in the United States. Her many poems and tales were afterwards collected and published in book form. Among these volumes are The Blind Girl and Other Tales, Glimpses of Home Life, Pictures of Early Life, Nature's Gems, or American Wild Flowers (1845), and The Waldorf Family, a fairy tale of Brittany, partly a translation and partly original, (1848.)
Mary Elizabeth Hewitt was an American poet and editor who flourished in the 1840s and 1850s. She published: Memorial of F. S. Osgood; Songs of Our Lord; Heroines of History; and Poems Sacred, Passionate, and Legendary.
Rossiter Johnson was an American author and editor. He edited several encyclopedias, dictionaries, and books, and was one of the first editors to publish "pocket" editions of the classics. He was also an author of histories, novels, and poetry. Among his best known works was Phaeton Rogers, a novel of boyhood in Rochester, New York, where Johnson was born.
Estelle Anna Lewis was a 19th-century American poet and dramatist. After marriage, she started using pen names, including "Estelle", "Stella", and "Stells".
Juliet Hamersley Lewis Campbell was an American poet and novelist.
Edward Harrison May Jr. was an English-American painter who spent much of his career in Paris.
Louisa Jane Hall was an American poet, essayist, and literary critic. None of her poems appeared in print until after she was twenty; they were then published anonymously in the Literary Gazette, and other periodicals. Miriam, a Dramatic Sketch, her most notable work, was begun in the summer of 1826, finished the following summer, and published ten years later. Her other principal work is in prose, Joanna of Naples, an Historical Tale, published in 1838. Hannah, the Mother of Samuel the Prophet and Judge of Israel (1839) was, like Miriam, a verse play. She and her father moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1831, and they lived together until October 1840, when she married the Rev. E. B. Hall, of Providence, Rhode Island.
Harriett Ellen Arey was a 19th-century American educator, author, editor, and publisher. Raised in New England, she was one of the first women in the United States to study in a co-educational environment. In Cleveland, Ohio, she became a contributor to The Daily Cleveland Herald and taught at a girls' school. After marrying, she moved to Wisconsin, and served as "Preceptress and Teacher of English Literature, French, and Drawing" at State Normal School in Whitewater, Wisconsin. After returning to Cleveland, she edited a monthly publication devoted to charitable work, and served on the board of the Woman's Christian Association. Arey was a co-founder and first president of the Ohio Woman's Press Association. Her principal writings were Household Songs and Other Poems and Home and School Training. Arey died in 1901.
Susan Archer Weiss was an American poet. Losing her hearing as a child, she rarely mingled in society beyond a select circle of friends, finding her happiness in her home. Her life was essentially that of a poet, though she also painted. In September 1859, a collection of her poems was issued by Rudd & Carlton, of New York City. Her name was included among those of young writers in American Female Poets, Sarah Josepha Hale's Woman's Record, and other similar works. Weiss was a friend of Edgar Allan Poe. She died in 1917.
Elizabeth Bogart was an American author of prose and poetry from New York City. She was published in numerous periodicals including the New-York Mirror. Rare for a woman at the time, Bogart was financially independent and wrote solely for her own pleasure, not out of a need for wages. One of her most famous poems, "He came too late," tells of a woman who spurns a fickle lover who did not tend to her. Her work covers a wide range of topics, including family, nature, relationships and femininity.
Luella J. B. Case was a 19th-century American author. She wrote several popular books and was a contributor to various periodicals, including The Rose of Sharon, The Ladies' Repository, and The Universalist Review among others. Affiliated with the Universalist church, she also wrote hymns.
Catharine H. Waterman was an American writer and poet who contributed to the periodical literature. Her publications included books, edited volumes, as well as hymns.
Mary Ann H. Dodd was a 19th-century American poet.
Margaret L. Bailey was an American anti-slavery writer, poet, lyricist, as well as newspaper editor and publisher. She served as editor of The Youth's Monthly Visitor, a children's magazine, and as the publisher of The National Era, an anti-slavery journal.