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Content RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD'S
THE FEMALE POETS OF AMERICA:
THE POLITICS OF ANTHOLOGIZING
by
Judy Myers Laue
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
April 1988
Copyright 1988 Judy Myers Laue
UMI Number: DP23132
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inz
This dissertation, written by
under the direction of h.&C Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re
quirements for the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H ILO S O P H Y
Dean of Graduate Studies
Date
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
....
For
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LeRoy and Millie Myers
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Acknowledgments
This is a dissertation about a literary community in
the past and it is the product of literary community in
the present. I would like to thank several of my
professors and colleagues at the University of Southern
California for their interest and advice in the writing of
this dissertation. The most important influence on the
dissertation and on my understanding of American
literature has been my major professor, Jay Martin. It
was his suggestion that led me to the topic, and his
continuing interest in the project has kept my interest in
it fresh. I would also like to thank another of my
professors, Ron Gottesman, whose experience with the
Norton Anthology of American Literature made him an
excellent reader of the final text. During the planning
and writing of the manuscript two of my colleagues at the
university, Sherry Banks and Sydney Dietrich, gave ongoing
advice and emotional support while they worked on projects
of their own.
iii
So many librarians contributed to my research that it
is impossible to thank all of them here. I would,
however, like to especially thank the librarians at the
Huntington Library, the Boston Public Library Manuscript
Room, and the Pennsylvania Historical Society, for their
help in finding resources, duplicating documents, dating
manuscripts, and even in deciphering handwriting. j
Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Dr. Edward j
J
A. Laue, for his help with difficult computer problems and
his unshakeable belief that the manuscript would one day
be finished.
iv
Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
Preface vi
I. Literary Women Abroad 1
II. A Biographical Warwick 51
III. Choosing the Poets 99
IV. Choosing the Poems 173
V. The Female Poets of America 235
VI. The Widening Circle 286
Epilogue 339
Bibliography 345
v
Preface
Most of the interesting discoveries in scholarship
get made while the researcher is looking for something
else. I began this study with a general interest in
literary communities, the way in which they form around a
publication, or a charismatic person, or a location. I
was also interested in the role that publishers and other
literary agents play in shaping the kind of literature
that gets produced in a society. A favorite professor of
mine who knew that I was interested in anthologies
suggested that I write a biography of Rufus Wilmot
Griswold, a nineteenth-century editor who had dominated
anthology-making in America in the 1840's. Without
checking to see if such a work had been done before, I
began to read the letters in the Huntington Library
between Griswold and James T. Fields, the Boston editor
and publisher who was Griswold's closest friend.
The letters revealed the inside life of the
publishing world. Fields and Griswold continually
compared notes on recently published books, exchanged
literary gossip, and discussed their relationships with
writers they promoted and writers they disliked. It was
fascinating to see the inner workings of the literary
machinery, the making of literary reputations, the
plumping of certain writers by well-placed reviews. At
about this time I discovered that a biography had already
been written of Griswold, and though it had been published
in the 1940's it was so thoroughly researched and so well
written that a new biography was unnecessary. But I was
too interested in the Griswold-Fields letters to give up
what I was doing. j
Instead I shifted my focus to the making of j
I
anthologies. At first I feared that there might not be j
enough material to write a book about the day-to-day j
decisions that Griswold made in compiling his ■
anthologies. Those decisions had, after all, been made :
140 yesrs ago. Fortunately, the lack of modern technology
I
in the nineteenth century makes the task of the twentieth )
century scholar much easier. While editors and publishers |
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today conduct much of their business over the teleDhone, 1
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Griswold and his colleagues wrote letters, hundreds of
them, many of which were kept and are available for j
I
research. I looked in American Literary Manuscripts and j
saw the extent of the available Griswold correspondence.
The Boston Public Library, which houses the bulk of !
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vii :
Griswold's letters, had published an annotated catalogue
of the Griswold holdings in their quarterly journal. I
began to see that not only would I have enough material on
Griswold to write on his anthology-making, but that I
would be wise to narrow my topic to his editing of one
anthology, as a sort of representative sample.
I chose to research The Female Poets of America, an
anthology which Griswold compiled in 1848. This anthology
interested me more than the others for several reasons.
Though I had thought of my book primarily as a canon
study, a way of understanding how some writers became
established in the nineteenth century, I was also
interested in the feminist aspect of this anthology. It !
seemed odd to me that Griswold would choose to publish an
anthology only for women poets. I was also interested in
some personal aspects of Griswold's life that might
influence the making of The Female Poets of America.
Griswold spent most of his adult life more or less
i
unmarried. His first wife Caroline died before Griswold
reached his professional peak. Though Griswold remarried,
his second marriage was never consummated, and except for
a short period, he and his second wife did not live
together. The Female Poets of America was compiled during |
the time that Griswold was married to this second wife and
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viii
I felt that it would be interesting to see how Griswold's
marital status might affect his editing of women poets.
Once I had settled on a topic I began to narrow down
what libraries I would need to visit. The book would be
based mostly on unpublished letters between Griswold and
his literary acquaintances: his editorial colleagues, the
women writers who would be considered for the volume, and
his publishers. I was also interested in letters between j
the women writers themselves. I wanted to see how they
related to each other and what kind of relationship they
had with Griswold, their editor. Most of the letters were
located in libraries on the East Coast with some of the
largest collections in the Boston Public Library and the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I spent seven weeks
reading letters at twelve libraries in Boston, Cambridge,
Providence, New Haven, Hartford, New York, and
i
Philadelphia. |
Upon returning home, I canvassed all of the other |
libraries which were listed in American Literary
i
Manuscripts as having relevant documents. I wrote to j
these 146 libraries, explaining the nature of my study and ,
listing the letters that American Literary Manuscripts had !
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indicated were in their possession. In each letter I
included a self-addressed postcard and asked them to
return it to me, indicating either that their letters were
not pertinent to my study or listing those letters which
they felt might be useful. I then ordered photocopies of
potentially relevant letters. Of the 146 libraries to
which I sent letters, 129 responded. I had asked
specifically for letters dated between 1848 and 1855 since
most letters having to do with the publication of The
Female Poets of America would have been written during
this period. Most libraries had no letters that fell
within this time frame. However, several libraries had
large collections of letters during this period which were
subsequently photocopied and which I examined. Many times
these letters were not useful for the study, though they
were written in the right time period by the right
people. Occasionally, however, I found a vein of very
interesting material. More rarely, I found a librarian
who understood precisely the sort of material that was
needed and who did a little literary sleuthing to uncover
item I could not have known existed. Such librarians
cannot be praised enough.
A few secondary sources also proved useful. Joy
Bayless' biography of Griswold was indispensable for
x
general information on his life and led me to some very
good material on The Female Poets of America. Griswold's
son, William M. Griswold, had published a collection of
his father's correspondence in 1898, entitled Passages
from the Correspondence and Other Papers of Rufus W.
Griswold. This volume provided a convenient way of
getting at some of the letters, and will appear in the |
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text by its shortened title, Passages, in order to avoid \
any confusion between the elder and the younger Griswold.
William Griswold was not always perfectly accurate in his
transcription of the letters, most of which are available
at the Boston Public Library. In those cases where I have
seen the original letter, I have used my own transcription
from the original document. For background material on
the women poets I used American Women Writers and Notable i
i
American Women. Several of Rufus Griswold's compilations
i
will be cited in the text by their initials: The Female j
Poets of America as FP, The Poets and Poetry of America as I
I
PP, and The Prose Writers of America as PW.
i
\
Once I had accumulated the documents it was a case of
fitting the pieces of the puzzle together. Letters are
written between people who are working within a specific
context. Remarks that Griswold would make to Horace
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Greeley were not always clear in their intent, unless I |
xi
could see the letter from Greeley that Griswold was
responding to. Sometimes a third letter from someone else
would help make the situation clear. This was the most
enjoyable part of my task, learning how to understand the
literary world of the 1840's by getting to know the people
who lived in it. I also gained some expertise in
deciphering nineteenth-century handwriting. j
What I discovered from my research was that The j
1
Female Poets of America had been both a response to a j
flood of women's writing that occurred in the 1830's and
40's and a spur to women's writing in the 1850's.
Griswold's collection of ninety-four women poets became J
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the crystalizing point of women's writing before the Civil
War. His was the first scholarly anthology of American
women poets, and it became the standard reference work on
women's poetry for several decades after it was J
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published. More than any other event in the literary J
experience of antebellum women poets, this book
established the canon of women's poetry in America. The J
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history of how this book was put together and the politics
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of its compilation do much to explain the publishing world ;
of the 1840's and 50's and a woman's place in it.
xii
For the woman who wanted to publish in the 1830's and
40's there were mainly two outlets— the periodical press
and gift books. New technologies which made printing less
expensive had helped to spawn hundreds of magazines and
newspapers. Nearly every magazine and journal printed
both poetry and short stories. Most of the periodicals
had a short life span. A newspaper might appear, then
disappear, in the space of six months. Most periodicals i
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had a limited circulation. Only a few major periodicals
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were circulated much beyond their own cities. Thus the j
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literary market was very fluid. A fluid market makes it
easy to publish for the first time. It also makes it much I
more difficult for a writer to establish a lasting, more
than regional, reputation.
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Any writer aiming at a solid, national reputation
needs a more permanent form for her work. It was very
difficult for an American writer, particularly for a
woman, to get her work published in a book. The lack of
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adequate copyright laws insured the success of English j
books and made it doubly hard for fledgling American i
authors. The gift books and annuals were extremely j
popular, but they appeared from so many different sources
and with such varying quality of writing in them that they
had the same transient quality as the periodicals. The
gift books were also hastily assembled, which added to the
feeling of impermanence.
When Rufus Griswold began to publish anthologies in
the 1840's he filled an important need in the 1 iternary
community: the need to place the work of American authors j
before the public in a comprehensive, scholarly way. j
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Anthologies play an important role in the literary
community. They do more to shape our view of literature,
I believe, than any other form of expression.
Anthologists choose which authors they will include and
how much space will be allotted to them. They choose some ;
works to include and they exclude others. They write
I
biographical headnotes, lingering in their descriptions of j
{ some aspects of the author's work and life and hastening
| over others. The making of anthologies is not a neutral
task. Yet we have the sense as we read anthologies that
the opinions contained therein are somehow accepted, even
standard. Though the authors of anthologies have their
names listed on the front of the book, anthologies give |
the feeling of being authorless and even omniscient
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surveys of the field. Perhaps because most anthologies
have several authors, the reader never has the sense that
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the opinions expressed can be traced to any one human
being with prejudices and idiosyncracies.
If anthologies have such power now, imagine their
power when they first began to appear with any regularity
in the 1840's. Americans were obsessed with the need for
a national literature. Anthologies helped them to believe
that they had one. Anthologies were a great improvement
over gift books which were sloppily edited and made no
pretense of being comprehensive. In the 1840's Griswold's
anthologies sold exceptionally well; each went through
several editions and many reprintings. Anthologies also
changed the fluid literary market by firming up opinions
on who the important American authors were. An anthology
helps the writer who is trying to consolidate her reading
public; it hurts the writer who is trying to break into
the system or to alter an earlier reputation.
The literary community is complex system of
j relationships between individual writers, editors,
I publishers, anthologists, and literary hangers-on.
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Personalities play a central role in how the community
operates. It is the contention of this study that Rufus
Griswold's personality and character had a profound effect j
on the book he created, The Female Poets of America, as
XV
well as on the women's literary community that he both
helped to create and helped to shape. The personal
letters of Rufus Griswold and the correspondence he
received from his literary acquaintances help to show how
one anthologist both helped and hurt the women who wanted
to publish poetry in the 1840's.
xvi
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Chapter 1
Literary Women Abroad
"The Literary Female is abroad, and the souls of j
literary men are tried." Elizabeth Stoddard to Rufus W.j
Griswold, January 4, 1856, Boston Public Library ;
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It is easier to say that women began to publish
extensively in the 1830's and 40*s than it is to say why.
So many features of American life were changing during
this time that the influences of cultural change on the
literary community were many. Certainly, one of the
strongest influences on women was the tremendous economic I
change from a farm economy to a market economy. Before
the Revolution and for a decade or so after it women J
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played a relatively stable role in the nation's economy. j
The American woman was traditionally a farm wife. Her 1
spinning, carding, weaving, sewing, candle and soap-making ;
filled her family's needs and also added to their ]
prosperity since she could sometimes make a little extra ]
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by selling her goods to the community. But the 1
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industrialization of the nineteenth century changed the
world of women's work radically.
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In the early nineteenth century farms became less |
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important in the economic scheme of things. j
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Transportation of food items to the rapidly growing cities j
became easier with improved roads, and, as a result, farms j
that were quite distant from the city could compete with
farms on the city's outskirts. Farmers close to the city
tended to move out where they could obtain fertile land
more cheaply. Many farmers changed occupations and went
to work in city-related occupations. This shift in
occupations increased the value of money. In a farm
economy the family produces most of the goods it needs. [
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In a market economy, most goods are bought with money. !
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Merchant capitalism was part of the shift to a market
economy. Merchant capitalists produced goods by hiring
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laborers in their homes or in individual shops which the <
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merchant capitalists supervised. Like later factory
owners, the merchant capitalists invested capital, hired
labor, and supplied products to markets they had searched
out. As the demand for cash became greater after the
Revolution, more and more women were employed in this
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! system. In such a system the craftsman has less control !
over his or her product, and the tasks became more and
more fragmentary (Cott, Bonds of Womanhood, 24-25).
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Traditional women's work lost status and became less (
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important in the community.
As factories were built, women's work changed even
more radically. One of the central occupations of women,
spinning and weaving, was one of the first to be
industrialized. The textile mills in New England
completely revolutionized the garment industry. The
workers employed in the mills before the 1840's were
almost entirely young women. For example, at the Hamilton
Company at Lowell in 1835, 85 percent of the machine
tenders were women and 80 percent were between the ages of |
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fifteen and thirty (Ryan 80). Factory work gave these 1
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women economic opportunities that had been unavailable to
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them before, but it left them with very little control
over their work. Women performed the low skill jobs, and
had almost no impact on company policy or operation. j
Factory work was also seen as a transitional job; it
filled up time for a women between the end of her 1
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schooling and the beginning of her married life. |
1. An example is Lucy Larcom who worked at the mills in
Lowell, Massachusetts. See Lucy Larcom, A New England
Girlhood, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889.
3
Women who were married lost much of their traditional
work to the factories. If a woman's husband were
well-to-do or part of the swiftly rising middle class, the
wife was left with much more leisure for her own
activities, as well as a sense of anxiety about what role
she might play in society. If her husband were not
earning a good living or if he died, it became more
difficult for a woman to find work. Part of the
employment problem for women was the widespread
professionalization of many occupations, some of which had
been traditionally women's occupations. For example, in
colonial America most midwives had been women. It was so i
completely a woman's occupation that in 1646 a man was
prosecuted in Maine for practicising midwifery (Hurd-Mead
486). In the nineteenth century, licensure radically
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changed the medical profession. For the most part, j
doctors attended medical colleges or trained with other !
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physicians. They obtained diplomas and licenses. Except
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among supporters of the homeopathic movement in the 1840's
and 50's, midwives subsequently lost status. At the same I
time women could not obtain the professional training that
made the profession of medicine so much more desirable.
Similar licensure procedures raised the status of lawyers
as well, again excluding women (Lerner 125).
It is particularly ironic that the economic forces
that were shutting women out of the labor market occurred
in the midst of the post-Revolutionary shift toward
egalitarianism. Jacksonian politics was full of the
rhetoric of equality. There was tremendous optimism in
America's future. While colonial society had been
basically hierarchical, the emerging market reduced the
importance of one's family or background as an indicator
of one's social importance and increased the mobility
between classes. This social mobility gave rise to
tremendous competition for well-paying jobs. As a result
women were pushed into jobs with low status and low pay.
This loss of traditional work and social standing
within the community took a tremendous psychic toll on
women. It raised questions about what role women were to
play in this new society. In the face of this social
upheaval the popular press stepped in to give direction.
| Ladies1 Magazine, edited by Sarah Josepha Hale, was
particularly ardent in advocating what has come to be
called "the cult of true womanhood" or "the canon of
domesticity," the ideology that formed the basis for a
woman's role in nineteenth-century America. True
womanhood demanded that a woman be pious, pure,
submissive, and domestic (Welter 152). Women should
inhabit a world different from men, a world in which these
virtues remain untainted. That other world, was the home,
and it constituted a woman's "sphere." In the home women
could occupy a "higher" and more spiritual position than
their husbands could aspire to. A woman should strive for
"influence" over her family, that is, spiritual and moral
influence. She could do so only within the home, and only
by devoting herself to the concerns of the home, not by
striving for success in any worldly sense. As Mrs. Curry
told the readers of Ladies1 Magazine in June 1829:
We would not, by precept or example, make j
women emulous of obtaining the same kind and j
measure of fame as men, because we do not
believe such endeavors would contribute to their
respectability or happiness. There is an
allotted province for either sex, and nature has |
made the destination of the female too obvious
to be mistaken. The domestic station is woman's
appropriate sphere, and it will be honorable if
she but adorn it with the graces, dignify it by
intelligence and hallow it by sentiment,
tenderness and piety. (II, 282)
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This message was preached by hundreds of periodicals !
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and "self-help" books both in the secular and the
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religious press in the decades before the Civil War. J
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William A. Alcott carved out a literary niche for himself
by writing on these views and published The Young Woman1s
Guide, The Young Wife, and The Young Mother to an
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enthusiastic audience. Tyoical titles of these books and I
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pamphlets were: The Young Lady1s Friend, The Young Lady
Guide, The Young Ladies1 Book, and Letters to Young
2
Ladies. Mrs. A. J. Graves' argument in her book, Woman
in America: Being an Examination into the Moral and
Intellectual Condition of American Female Society is a
good example of the rationale behind this viewpoint:
That woman should regard home as her
appropriate domain is not only the dictate of
religion, but of enlightened human reason.
Well-ordered families are the chief security for
the permanent peace and prosperity of the state,
and such families must be trained up by
enlightened female influence acting within its
legitimate sphere. . . . If man's duties lie
abroad, woman's duties are within the quiet
seclusion of home. If his greatness and power
are most strikingly exhibited in associated
action upon associated masses, her true
greatness and her highest efficiency consist in
individual efforts upon individual beings. The
religion and the politics of man have their
widest sphere in the world without; but the
religious zeal and the patriotism of woman are
most beneficially and powerfully exerted upon
the members of her household. It is in her home
that her strength lies; it is here that the
gentle influence, which is the secret of her
might, is most sucessfully employed; and this
she loses as soon as she descends from her calm
height into the world's arena ....
(157-58)
Increasingly the word "home" came to mean "retreat,
a retreat especially from the world of work. As Nancy F
2. These self-help books are listed in Ralph Thompson's
American Literary Annuals and Gift Books. 1825-1865, New
York, 1936.
Cott points out in The Bonds of Womanhood:
In accentuating the split between "work"
and "home" and proposing the latter as a place
of salvation, the canon of domesticity tacitly
acknowledged the capacity of modern work to
desecrate the human spirit. Authors of domestic
literature, especially the female authors,
denigrated business and politics as arenas of
selfishness, exertion, embarrassment, and
degradation of soul. (67)
The commercial world smacked too much of money. As
Sarah Josepha Hale cautioned, "Our men are sufficiently
money-making. Let us keep our women and children from the
contagion as long as possible" (Jan. 1830; Ladies'
Magazine III, 42-43).
Women were to forgo a position in the commercial
world in exchange for the less tangible gratification of
"influence" over their families. Mothers were to be a
primary influence on their children, and even on their
husbands. Despite the fact that "true womanhood" called
for submission to one's husband, a woman's influence could
provide moral guidance for her husband, and in some way
this guidance would be more powerful than his authority
over her. Sarah Hale explained in Ladies' Magazine:
Authority over the men must . . . never
be usurped; but still, women may, if they will,
exert their talents, and [by] the opportunities
nature has furnished, obtain an influence in
society that will be paramount to authority.
They may enjoy the luxuries of wealth, without
6
enduring the labors to acquire it; and the
honors of office, without feeling its cares, and
the glory of victory, without suffering the
dangers of the battle. (Sept. 1828; Ladies1
Magazine I, 422-23)
It was important in the midst of the the developing
economy to have women stay at home. Someone was still
needed to take care of children and do housework. The
work that had been a woman's link with the
community— spinning, sewing, selling dairy products,
etc.— was no longer as profitable an occupation as
before. These home occupations were also not as
attractive as previously. It is one thing to produce
goods knowing that you are almost the sole means of
obtaining these goods. It is another thing to produce
them knowing that they can be produced with equal or
superior quality and bought almost as cheaply on the
market. There is also the influence of fashion here.
Then as now, it was not as fashionable to wear clothing
manufactured at home as it was to wear "bought goods."
American society was becoming increasingly a consumer
society, with women being the consumers and not the
producers.
What then were to be the occupations for women?
Teaching was one opportunity that opened up for women just
as the others were being closed. Many more women were In
9
some degree educated in the 1830's and 40*s than had ever
been educated before. The "dame-schools" available to
!
young girls before the Revolution were increasingly
replaced by "Female Academies" in which young ladies
learned geography, music, literature, modern languages and
the like. In comparing what girls were taught compared to
boys, Margaret Fuller once complained that girls "run over
superficially even more studies without being really |
taught anything" (qtd. in Cross 17). Grace Greenwood went j
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even farther in her comments concerning women's education,
saying,
I am convinced there is an alarming
conspiracy formed by fathers and guardians to
patronize only such institutions of female \
learning, as are calculated to keep damsels in j
subordination, in order to prevent them from ;
fulfilling their natural, lofty destiny— from
aspiring to equal power and influence in Church ;
and State. (23-24)
If the "Female Academies" were inadequate, they were
still tremendously popular, and many young women were j
educated there and went on to open up academies of their I
own.
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Reading also prepared women to teach. The tremendous j
increase in the books and magazines available in stores |
and through the circulating libraries combined with the I
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greater amount of leisure time enjoyed by women, made
10
women much better informed than they had been. In urging
a publisher to print her biographical dictionary, Sarah
Josepha Hale declared, "In our country, women are the
readers— and it will be very strange if a work like this
'Biography of Distinguished Women' is not popular" (Hale
to Rev. J. McClintock, May 16, 1849, NNPM). Reading was
one way of staying in touch with the world, despite one's
"retreat" into the home. Lydia Maria Child, one of the
widely-read prose writers of the 1830's and 40's praised
reading because "it cheers so many hours of illness and
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seclusion; it gives the mind something to interest itself j
about . . ." (86).
I
Widely-read women's magazines, like Ladies' Magazine
and later Godey's devoted considerable soace to articles I
I
advocating "female education" and urged women to prepare
themselves as teachers, even if they remained inside the
home to teach their children. Between 1832 and 1850 the
number of female teachers employed in America jumped from
20 thousand to 55 thousand (Lebergott 520). Along with
factory work and domestic service, teaching remained one
of the few occupations open to women in the nineteenth !
century.
11
Those women who could afford not to work outside the
home had another way of getting involved in the world.
They joined reform movements of every kind and
description. The reform impulse fitted perfectly with the
ideology of "true womanhood." Reform committees offered
unpaid work and were therefore untainted by
commercialism. A woman could join such societies in the
confidence that she was exercising the superior moral I
influence that the popular press had repeatedly described
her as having. It was a sphere in which women could
exercise power without having to apologize for it. Reform
movements may have also served as an outlet for the
frustration that women felt in seeing their role diminish
in the midst of the economic optimism of the period.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg suggests that because the role of
i
women had been so carefully delineated, most women could j
not openly challenge the accepted norms for womanly j
behavior. They were, therefore, forced to "find ways to ;
manifest a discontent with their comparatively passive and ;
constricted social role." As a result "many such women
channeled frustration, anger and a compensatory sense of
superior righteousness into the reform movements of the
first half of the 19th century" ("Beauty, the Beast" 564).
I
!
i
12
Reform movements offered opportunities for both
leadership and community. It is important to note however
i
that the leadership offered was a leadership of women and j
I
the community offered was a community of women.
Increasingly women exercised power only over women and
children. Teaching offered the same limited power. Women
taught largely in female academies or in primary schools.
They did not teach in male academies or in universities. ;
It is also significant that the occupations left open
to women were those in which writing and speaking were the
1
most important functions. Women were educated in history, j
literature and the modern languages. They read
I
assiduously. It is only natural that they would find |
teaching and social reform, occupations in which J
communication skills were most important, very appropraite ,
to the training society had indicated for them.
One other arena remained in which women could use
i
these skills. That arena was writing. Women became
i
writers almost as readily as they had become teachers, and j
indeed, writing seemed to fit the image of womanhood j
espoused in ante-bellum America even better than teaching ;
did. The education women received in the female academies
was mostly in literature and languages. Reading had j
i
13 |
become largely the purview of women. The social reform
movements had instilled in women strong moral commitments
that needed expression. And writing was an occupation
that might accommodate itself to the image of women that
the "true womanhood" ideology indicated. Writing is a way
of exerting "influence," particularly moral influence.
Society has always assumed to one degree or another that
writing is done for other than commercial reasons. It is
I
done in retreat; the writer is a passive, observing figure i
i
looking in on the active world. In these ways, writing !
I
fit the image of the kind of work women might '
j
appropriately perform.
This is not to say that it was particularly easy for
women to enter the literary community. In fact, much of j
this study will deal with the difficulty these women faced ^
in breaking into the market. But writing was an
occupation that suited the most basic needs of women. It
could be done at home even if a woman had children to care
for. It did not require professional training which was
largely unavailable to women. And, with luck, a woman j
j could earn enough with her writing to live on without its j
seeming to be a commercial endeavor. The real difficulty !
I
that remained is the fact that writing is one of the most
assertive professions possible. A writer is telling the
I
14
world what to think and, sometimes, what to do. For women
i
to succeed as writers in the era of "true womanhood" they
would have to operate within tightly circumscribed
boundaries of subject matter and manner of expression.
They must seem to be ladies in order to operate in a man's
world.
Writing offered to women, then, a kind of ;
I
schizophrenic process, always full of tension. On the j
surface the woman writer needed to be more feminine, more |
domestic, more submissive even than her non-writing
counterparts in order to hide the inherent assertiveness
of her profession. When Elizabeth Oakes Smith, a poet and
I
widely-acclaimed lecturer on women's rights, spoke in j
Concord, she was escorted into the hall by Henry Thoreau |
who wondered at this contradiction of firm beliefs and the
feminine masking of them:
She was a woman in the too common sense I
after all. You had to substitute courtesy for i
sense and argument. It requires nothing less J
than a chivalric feeling to sustain a j
conversation with a lady. I carried her lecture i
for her in my pocket wrapped up in her |
handkerchief; my pocket exhales cologne at this
moment. (Qtd. in Pattee 101) 1
Part of the feminine masking entailed some way of
defining female poetry in a way that would not antagonize
a male literary community. Thus it was possible in 1850
15
for an espoused feminist like Grace Greenwood to define
"true feminine genius" as "timid, doubtful and clingingly
dependent; a perpetual childhood" (Greenwood Leaves 310). j
1
Another term applied to women's writing, particularly
their poetry, was the word "effusion." Both women poets
and their critics continually referred to women's poems as
"effusions." The Oxford English Dictionary defines
"effusion" as "a pouring out; a spilling." Women poets
found it important that their work should not be seen as
I
an intellectual endeavor; their poems must not be too j
i
carefully crafted. The crafting of poetry is the j
professional aspect of it. Better— that is, safer— to
have your poetry appear to be the natural result of an
I
overabundance of emotional heat. It is difficult to argue ;
with a person's right to produce poetry that is entirely I
»
the result of inspiration. Poetry was objectionable for a J
i
woman if she saw herself as the manufacturer of it, the I
I
artist who crafted the work and had intentions in I
I
producing it. Ann Douglas has rightly described these !
women writers as "professionals parading as amateurs"
(85). They meant to earn money and fame by writing; they j
j had to appear oblivious to these concerns in order to do j
' so. As Caroline Hentz declared of her novel, Ernest
I
Linwgpd:
Book! Am I writing a book? No indeed!
This is only a record of my heart's life,
written at random and carelessly thrown aside,
sheet after sheet, sibylline leaves from the
great book of fate. The wind may blow them
away, a spark consume them. I may myself commit
them to the flames. I am tempted to do so at
this moment. (Qtd. in Clinton 47)
Women also limited the inherent assertiveness of
their work by claiming that they wrote mainly for women.
This was the assumption behind Sarah Hale's promotion of
her "Biographical Dictionary for Women," quoted earlier,
when she claimed that women were the readers in America
and therefore her book ought to sell. Elizabeth Oakes
Smith, in writing to Rufus Griswold who was publishing her
poetry in Graham1s Magazine, held the same view in May of
1842 :
I
Indeed, I have felt some compunctions in !
presenting my claims at all [to being a poet], !
feeling, as I do, that my success has depended ]
mainly upon the partiality of my female j
friends. This is a delightful conviction to me, |
for to such only do I wish to possess
abilities. (May 1842, PHi)
I
f
I While women perceived themselves as writing for
i I
women, they had to get published by writing what men would 1
accept. Almost all publishers and editors were men.
t
Sarah Josepha Hale was the most notable exception. She !
i
published the writing of women throughout her forty years
as editor of Godey1s. Ann Stephens was another I
exception. She was a contributing editor to Graham1s
Magazine in the early 1840‘s and the editor of Peterson*s
Magazine from 1842 to 1853. Perhaps because Godev*s was a
publication specifically aimed at women, Hale felt no
apparent unease at holding a job usually held by a man.
Ann Stephens, on the other hand, could be quite sensitive
about her role as editor. In 1842 a rumor went the rounds
that Stephens had become an editor of the Sunday News.
Stephens declared that the allegation had made her ill and
has wounded me very deeply, so deeply that
if it were not that I am compelled to write for
my bread I would never put my pen to paper again
for an American paper after my present contract
has expired. No one but myself knows how
earnestly I have persevered in my profession,
how much of mere profit I have sacrificed rather
than sacrifice anything of its respectability.
I feel indignant and wounded that any
member of the press should believe me capable of
accepting a situation proper only for the other
sex. . . . I know that I may be feeling this
subject too sensitively but no one knows how
keenly I feel anything calculated to represent
me as unwomanly. (Passages 111)
Ann Stephens and Sarah Josepha Hale did much to
publish and promote what women wrote in the 1840's, but
women dealt much more frequently with male editors than
female ones. The relationships that developed between
male editors and female writers were highly complex and
are worthy of a major study in their own right. They
operated on the basis of a chivalric code. An editor or
18
man of letters tended to single out a woman author,
sometimes according to the value he placed on her writing,
sometimes on the fact that she approached him with her
1
I
writing and he found her situation pathetic enough or
interesting enough to warrant his attention. He then
became a mentor to this protegee. He was expected to
offer counsel on individual pieces of writing, as well as
I
assist in getting the writing published, usually through a j
i
male publisher with whom he was friendly. The mentor
offered advice on what terms of publication might be
gotten, on what form the publication might take, on what
pieces might sell better than others. He often wrote
reviews of the work he had done so much to promote.
I
In the 1840's these relationships were being
established throughout the literary community. Certain !
[
editors developed reputations as being particularly suited
to these relationships and had a full contingent of women
marching behind them: N. P. Willis sponsored several j
i
women prose writers; Rufus Griswold gave special attention j
I to women poets. Most editors, however, had at least one
‘ i
or two "satellites" orbiting about them. Horace Greeley
took up Margaret Fuller and plugged her Woman in the
Nineteenth Century to anyone who would listen; John Keese,
[
a well-known anthologist, collected and published the j
19
poetry of Lucy Hooper in 1842; Poe particularly supported
Susan Archer Talley and Fanny Osgood; James T. Fields
offered advice and counsel to Hannah Gould even after her
poetic reputation had been pretty well established. These
relationships were not exceptions, but the norm.
While these relationships were intended as a means to
professional ends, the participants frequently expressed
themselves in the language of courtship. When Julia Ward j
Howe found her poetry described by the New York Post as J
"sensual-minded," she vented her anger in a letter to J.
T. Fields, "It is vulgar and disgraceful. Will no one
strike a chivalrous blow for me?" {Jan. 21 [1854],
CSmH). Clearly, she expected Fields to do so. Because a
male editor might have more than one protegee in his
circle jealousies sometimes sprang up between the women.
This occurred when George Graham took "Fanny Forester" j
under his wing, causing him to write this curious letter !
I
I
of reassurance to Fanny Osgood, another of "his" poets. |
I
i
The letter begins: j
Oh you jealous one! You couldn't let Fanny
Forester pass, without a hint that she is old &
wears "spectacles"— Now she is pretty,
bewitching and very kind, and I write her the
most loving of epistles. That's for abusing
her, and "my hand writing." You see everybody
is vain of something, and most of us, of that \
which everyone else knows we have no claims to.
I am particularly proud of the grace, ease, and
20
finish, to say nothing of the flourishes of my
pen. I scorn these [alone?] the dottings and
crossings of my pen. What right have the I's
and T's to any particular attention— this should
be confined to U & I. Don't you think so?
(May 24, 1845, MH)
These editor-writer relationships did not operate on
a strictly one-to-one basis. An editor nearly always had
i
more than one protegee for whom he felt varying degrees of
loyalty; a woman writer might have several editors that
were friendly towards her. The spheres of influence in
the literary community overlapped and impinged on each
other, making a dynamic and volatile literary system.
Loyalties changed, sometimes rapidly, changing in turn the
composition of these spheres of influence. An editor
might lose his position or be seriously criticized in the
i
literary journals. His protegees then tended to seek more
I
reliable support elsewhere while staying close to the !
first mentor in case his fortunes should reverse again.
A good example of this process can be found in the
relationship of Sarah Helen Whitman and Rufus Griswold.
I
Griswold met Whitman in the summer of 1848 when he was j
I
compiling The Female Poets of America (Bayless 147). She
was at that time thinking of marrying Edgar Allan Poe, who
I had been not only courting her, but also helping with her !
| I
J poetry. When Poe died and Griswold wrote the infamous
memoir of him, Whitman did not immediately reject Griswold
no matter what her personal feelings about him were. She
had just lost one mentor and could not afford to lose
another. Though she must have been fuming inwardly, she
treated Griswold with the same civility as before. It was
not until Griswold ran into personal problems of his own
in the form of a messy divorce from his second wife that
i
Whitman could afford to strike out at him openly. By that
J
«
time she had established publishing help elsewhere. ■
The fragility of the woman writer's position in the
literary system, based as it was on friendships and
spheres of influence, made it more important than ever
that she should find ways of publishing her work in a more
or less permanent fashion. I have already mentioned the
I
transitory character of most of the literary journals and j
the difficulty of publishing books. The anthologies that
i
! began to be published in the late 1820's and 30's became
i ;
extremely important then in establishing a firm place in
the literary pecking order. Since I am interested j
primarily in the history of women poets I will describe j
I
only anthologies of poetry. In fact, very few anthologies
of prose were published before Rufus Griswold published
one in 1847. Poetry has always been easier to anthologize
i
than prose, both because poems tend to be short, allowing
better representation for a poet, and because prose forms
are so various, ranging from the essay to the novel.
It is difficult to say which collection of American
poetry deserves the title of the first anthology of
American poetry. Literary gift books and annuals
generally contained selections from American poets, but
these books were not intended to be scholarly and there
i
was no intention of giving a representative view of the
nation's literature. There had been books of American
poetry published for specific purposes, for religious
instruction, for readings in public schools, or for
learning public speaking. Caleb Bingham's The America
Preceptor (1799) is an example of a book intended to teach
I
public speaking. I would not classify these books as !
anthologies. An anthology is meant for a general audience
1
as a representation of the best literature the nation has j
to offer. J
i
In this sense of the word Samuel Kettell published j
I
the first anthology of American poetry in 1829. It was i
entitled Specimens of American Poetry, With Critical and
Biographical Notices. It came in three volumes and |
J
attempted to be comprehensive, including 189 poets, '
sixteen of them women. The work was quite different from !
anything that had preceded it. It was intended so that
the reader could "know in a general and comprehensive
view, what has been done in the department of poetry by
American writers" (Kettell, Preface, v). Kettell's
notices of the authors were quite extensive, and the labor
involved in the project was unprecedented. The lack of
scholarly materials from which he could draw made the job
far more difficult, as Kettell pointed out in his preface:
When it is considered, that nothing similar
to this enterprise has ever before been
attempted, the reader must be aware of the
laborious nature of the researches necessary to
be made. The whole collection of American
literature was to be explored minutely without
guide or direction, and the difficulty of such a
task can be estimated only by those who have
attempted something similar. There was nowhere,
as I before remarked, even a tolerably accurate
list of American authors. Their works were
scattered as diversely as the leaves of the
Sybil, and many of them were about as easily to
be procured. We have no collections of them in
public libraries, and some had become so
completely forgotten that I was indebted in many
cases to accident for their discovery.
(Kettell, Preface, vii)
The book which followed Kettell's was not as good as
his. In 1831 George Cheever published his The American
Common-place Book of Poetry, which Poe, who was not
included in it, pronounced "excessively 'Common-place'"
(qtd. in Hubbell 13). Rather than take Kettell's
scholarly book as a model, Cheever tried to combine some
24
of the elements of a scholarly, representative book with
the format of the popular gift book. Cheever included
fifty-eight poets, selections from a dozen or so magazines
and newspapers, and numerous anonymous poems in a single
volume of 405 pages. Not much room was available for any
!
one poet or for biographical or critical notices. The I
selections of poetry were not even grouped by their
authors, giving the book the same feeling of random
arrangement as the gift books.
i
An important feature of the book was that Cheever j
perceived himself as aiding in the formation of the
national taste. He referred to his having "drawn out" the
poems "from corners where they had long lain forgotten and
neglected" (Cheever 6). He attempted to rank the poets as
i
follows: !
None can describe nature with a simpler and j
more affecting beauty than Bryant. None could
draw an American landscape in truer colors, and |
throw more endearingly around it the charm of j
moral and devout reflection, than Wilcox. In
the bold delineation of external scenery, and in
painting human passion, philosophy, religion, I
and the domestic affections, none have displayed ;
a more powerful fancy, or a deeper pathos of
feeling, than Dana. Few have written nobler !
odes than Plerpont. Burns himself could hardly
have thrown off a sweeter extempore effusion
than some of Brainard's. In the difficult field
of sacred drama, Hillhouse has shown a rich and
classic imagination. Few will contest the
beauty of Willis's Scripture pieces. (6)
25
For all Cheever's praise of these particular poets,
noticeably all men, he found American poetry both scarce
and rather thin. Having recently published a similar book
of prose selections that had sold well his publishers were
led, according to Cheever,
to hope that a similar volume of extracts
from American poetry might be attended with the
same success. It is true, that there are more
good prose writers in our country than there are
poets: but it would be strange, indeed, if
enough of really excellent poetry could not be
found to fill a volume like this. (3)
However small the volume and however careful the
selection of poems, Cheever could not seem to find enough
poems he considered "really excellent":
It is not pretended that every piece, in
the following selection, is a stately and
perfect song . . . If all the extracts are
not of sufficient excellence to excite vivid
admiration, most of them are of the kind that
meet us
Like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted. ( 3)
Despite Cheever1s lack of scholarship, the public found
Cheever's anthology very agreeable. It went through
twenty-four printings and many revisions (Hubbell 13).
William Cullen Bryant's anthology, Selections from
American Poets (1840), was in some ways similar to
Cheever's. It was a small, gift-sized volume of 316
pages. Like Cheever, Bryant perceived his book not as a
comprehensive work for scholars, but as a wholesome
entertainment for the public. Cheever had assured his
readers that "All the pieces in this volume are of the
purest moral character" (5). Bryant also limited his
choices along moral lines and told his audience:
Of some authors . . . the best things,
in a literary point of view are of a nature
which did not fall within the plan of the
compiler. Amatory poems and drinking songs,
notwithstanding the skill or the spirit with
which they might be written have been invariably
excluded as not proper for a book designed to be
placed in a school or family library, and,
therefore, to be read by very young persons. If
it had been the sole object of the compiler to
present samples of the poetical literature of
his country, he would have adopted a less rigid
rule in this respect. (iii)
Bryant's volume was, however, still superior to
Cheever*s. Bryant Included no anonymous "selections" from
the periodical press, though as he pointed out in his
i I
preface he might have done so if he had had the time to I
i
ascertain their authorship (iii). By insisting on knowing j
| who the poet was before including a poem, and by grouping
| the poems under the poet's name, Bryant made it clear that j
his work was really a collection of poets and not of
individual poems. It is this factor that makes Bryant's |
I
work so much more cohesive than Cheever's. Bryant was
27 i
more interested in giving a sample of an individual poet's
work, and thus helping to create a poet's reputation.
Bryant's Selections from American Poets was first
published in 1840. As Bryant's popularity as a poet
increased, so did his sales, and his book was published
until 1900.
John Keese's anthology, The Poets of America. was
published in two volumes in 1840 and 1842. Poe preferred
it to Bryant's book, possibly because Keese's principles
in choosing the poems tended to support literary rather
than religious values. By expanding the work to two
volumes, Keese was able to include a much more
comprehensive representation of poets than any of his
predecessors had, though he often limited a poet to only
one or two selections. Keese was keenly aware of the
importance of giving a sense of permanence to a poet's
work. In the preface to Volume I he declared:
The main part of our poetical literature .
has been occasional and fugitive. It has
usually come before the public eye in small
detached portions, with slight pretension to
permanence in the form of its publication, and
has been rescued from speedy oblivion only by
its own beauty and power. (9-10)
He expected his volumes to help remedy these
deficiencies.
Keese blamed the public's disregard of American
poetry less on the quality of the poems themselves than on
the ineptitude of the literary promoters that published
them. Publishers did not package their product well by
illustrating the poems with fine engravings and making the
volumes of poetry beautiful to look at as well as to
read. As he told his public:
The genius of the artist, and the
liberality of the publisher have done far too
little towards presenting an attractive shape,
and with due advantages the finest productions
of our poets. We have left our pearls
unstrung. We have made few attempts to heighten
the brilliancy of our gems, by the beauty of
their setting. (I, 10)
Whether or not this remark is true, it was certainly
self-serving. Keese was a painter and had illustrated his
own volumes with engravings done from his paintings. The
volumes were beautifully bound in green leather with gilt
lettering. Keese's anthology probably made a greater
impact because of the way it looked than it did from the
quality of its composition. Publishers were just
beginning to understand that the packaging and promoting
of a book could make a vast difference in its sale. The
anthologies that followed Keese's were generally thicker
and more sumptuously bound, often including engravings
l
I
29
even when the engravings had little to do with the subject
matter of the book.
The anthologies already mentioned reflected the
spirit of the Eastern seaboard and not the rest of the
country. Most of the avenues of publishing were located
between Boston and Philadelphia, a fact which was
reflected in the poets chosen to fill these books. One
early anthologist, William David Gallagher, was highly
critical of the "apparently studied determination of our
Atlantic neighbors to do nothing which will have a
tendency to bring us into competition with them"
(Gallagher 5-6). He sought to balance this surplus of
Eastern poets by publishing Selections from the Poetical
Literature of the West in 1841. In the preface Gallagher
described the kind of reception his book was likely to
get: "A volume made up exclusively of the Poetical
Literature of the West, will perhaps be received with a
dubious shake of the head, by many worthy persons, and a
wonder whether any good thing can come out of that
I
Nazareth" (5).
Gallagher included thirty-eight poets in his
Selections, six of them women. There were no biographical
j or critical notices, and the poems were arranged randomly,
not by individual poets. It is interesting, however, that
Gallagher did arrange the table of contents by author,
listing individual poems by page number after the poet's
name. He thus made it easier to compare poems by a
particular poet and get some idea of the poet's work.
Gallagher's volume got the reception he had predicted
it would. In a decade when anthologies generally went
into numerous printings and editions his volume was
printed once. Its lack of popularity probably owed as
much to the fact that it was printed in Cincinnati as it
did to its unusual selection of poets. Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia were the established distribution centers
for books. It was difficult to either supply the book or
promote it from Cincinnati. Gallagher's anthology did,
however, have some impact on the way anthologies were
made. Anthologists after him made a much greater attempt
to be comprehensive and include poetry from both the South
and the West. His book also supplied them with a list of
Western poets from which to choose and biographical
background material on which to draw. Southern writers
would have done well to put out a similar volume.
All of these anthologies included poetry by women,
though the number of female poets was always a fraction of
31
the number of male poets. Less than 10% of the poets in
Kettell or Cheever were women; much less than 20% in
Bryant or Gallagher were. What is perhaps more surprising
is that the actual selections of which women to include in
the anthology were so different in each of the books.
There seemed to be almost no "standard" women poets that
an anthologist would be obliged to include. Lydia
Sigourney, a Connecticut poet who wrote mainly on
religious topics, was the only poet included in all of the
four main anthologies— Kettell, Cheever, Bryant, and
Keese. Five women were included in three anthologies:
Sarah Hale, Emma Embury, Lucretia Maria Davidson, Anna
I
Maria Weills, and Caroline Gilman. Eight of the women j
were included in two. Not one of the twenty other poets j
found in these anthologies was included in more than one I
anthology.
Without having an established order of women poets,
anthologists tended to choose the poets they wished to
i
include on the basis of their own preferences and the |
i
i
availability of a poet's work. By including a particular
poet in his anthology, the editor gave her a degree of
!
permanence in the literary community. These anthologists {
also helped to establish certain women poets by including
a larger number of poems written by the poets they .
*
I
I
32 |
i
preferred. For example, in Gallagher's Selections from
the Poetical Literature of the West, he included seven of
Amelia Welby's poems, more than any of the other women
i
\
poets and more than most of the men in the volume. An
anthologist usually had clear favorites. Of the
contemporary poets Samuel Kettell included a large
selection of poems by Lydia Sigourney, Sarah Hale, and
Hannah Gould. Cheever favored Sigourney and Lucretia
Maria Davidson.
Two of the anthologies, Keese's and Bryant's,
I
attempted to be very evenhanded in their content. Keese
included only one or two poems for any of the women
poets. Bryant set his limit a little higher. But the
anthologist's bias was often clear even when he attempted j
to be objective and representative. H. J. Raymond, who
reviewed Bryant's book in the New York Tribune, certainly
attached meaning to the way Bryant had allotted space in
i
his work: "Six short poems are given from Jones Very, and j
this is a greater number than we have from the works of j
i
i
any other of the 78 authors introduced into this i
collection. . . . Eleven pages are given to Wilcox,
but two and a half to Longfellow. . . . Elizabeth Park
has twelve pages, Mrs. Sigourney five, and Maria Davidson !
two" (Passages 50).
I
33
One of the important features of these general
anthologies was the almost complete lack of
self-consciousness the anthologists felt about including
1
the writing of women. None of the prefaces make any
l mention of the fact that the volume contained writing by
women. Women writers were scattered throughout the
volume, not lumped together in one section, and except for |
the fact that women's names were almost invariably listed !
I
I
in the contents pages as Mrs. So-and-so while the men were
given no title and were listed by first and last names,
the women tended to be treated with the same respect
accorded the men. The anthologists of the 1830's and
early 40's seemed to view women's poetry not as something
separate from men's, but as part of general literary
i
culture. This is significant because of the way that view |
I
changed in the 1840's, largely due to the influence of
Rufus Wilmot Griswold. j
In 1837 the first American anthology devoted entirely
to poetry written by women was published. It was edited
I
by Sarah Josepha Hale, whose job as editor of Godey's (
Lady * s Book uniquely fitted her for the task. In many
ways it was really more of a gift book than an anthology.
It bore the title The Ladies' Wreath, and seemed to be the
i
1837 offering of the literary annual by that title. Yet ’
34 !
I
I
____I
it was certainly different from the standard gift book.
Gift books generally consisted of a variety of poets,
whose work was scattered over the pages. If a gift book
were organized on the basis of some principle, it was
always on the basis of subject matter, for example themes
like love or friendship. Organizing a book on the basis
that the poets included were all women made it quite
different from the ordinary annuals.
Hale did have some precedent in compiling a volume of
women poets. In 1827 an Englishman, Alexander Dyce, had
published Specimens of British Poetesses: Selected and
Chronologically Arranged. His book had been widely j
I
distributed in America, and Hale was no doubt aware of
it. Dyce was full of praise for poetry written by British
women. He included eighty-two poets in his volume and
predicted that in the future "new Anthologies will be
formed, more interesting and more exquisite than our own,
i
i
because the human mind, and above all, the female mind, is :
making a rapid advance" (Dyce iv-v).
I
I
| I
! Hale's volume was eoually divided between British and j
j I
American poets. By including only twelve poets from each
country she was able to give a much larger selection of
poetry for each poet. She included the poets most
35
frequently published in the anthologies that had preceded
her: Sigourney, Gould, Embury, Davidson, Anna Peyre
Dinnies (who appeared in both Gallagher in Keese), and, of
course, herself. In her anthology Hale was anxious to
stress the idea that it was natural for women to write
poetry. Because women were by nature drawn to spiritual
things they would write the best kind of poetry, the
poetry that would lead others to God:
In this, the best and most exalted office !
of the muse, woman is morally gifted to excel.
She has already entered on her province. It is
to encourage her efforts, and dispose all who
are wishing for the advancement of morals, to
reflect on the aid which, in the present state
of society, the cultivated genius of women may
impart, that I have prepared this volume. (4)
i
The Ladies1 Wreath was published in a revised edition in j
1839. j
(
I
The anthologies that included only women's poetry
i
were compiled on a different philosophical basis than the
general anthologies had been. The prefaces to the books
of "female poetry" made much of the fact that the work
contained therein was all produced by women. Dyce prided
himself on the originality of publishing a book of women's j
I
' literature: j
The present volume was planned, and partly !
executed, before we were aware of the existence !
of perhaps the only similar publication in the
I :
:
. i
36 |
language,— viz. Poems by Eminent Ladies, in two
small volumes, printed in 1755, and edited, as
we have understood, by Colman and Bonnel
Thornton. It contains, however, no extracts
from rare books, in which our own Selection is
so rich, and exhibits specimens of only eighteen
Poetesses. (v)
Hale saw her volume as "particularly intended for
young ladies— as a mirror, bright and polished, in which
they may see reflected the beauty of virtue, the
loveliness of the domestic affections, and the happiness
of piety . . ." (Ladies1 Wreath 4).
Promoting their books on the basis of the fact that
the work included within was produced by women proved to
I
be an extremely successful marketing strategy. Women were i
the major consumers of literature, and they were attracted
to the fact that these volumes were produced particularly |
I
for them by others of their gender. Women authors and !
poets began to have a sense of themselves as a group as
more magazines and anthologies sought to fill their pages J
I
with "women's literature." But in the long run the !
strategy of publishing women's literature for women was,
and still is, detrimental to women as authors and poets. |
For literature written by women to be taken seriously it j
I
must be seen as part of the general literary culture. It
must speak to universal needs and not specialized ones.
37 i
It must be a literature that knows as much of men as of
women, and it must speak as easily to men as to women.
One man more than any other helped to shape a view of
women's literature as separate, special, and ultimately
inferior to that of men. In the 1840's Rufus Wilmot
Griswold became the premier editor of work by women poets
and prose writers. He published two collections of
women's poetry: Gems from American Female Poets in 1842
and The Female Poets of America in 1849. In addition he
assisted dozens of women in publishing their writing in
their own volumes and in magazines. He offered editorial
counsel and wrote favorable reviews of women's writing.
He even ran errands for women writers, ferrying
manuscripts from obscure poetesses to well-known
publishers. No other mentor in nineteenth-century America
was so dutiful in pushing women's writing to publication
and promoting its sale once it was published. Yet
Griswold's sentimental view of women, his conviction that
their poetic genius was inferior to that of men, and his
own fragile ego that continually demanded an admiring
audience, did as much to undercut the writing of women as
his energy had done to promote it.
38
Griswold is, of course, best known as Poe's literary
executor, the maligner of Poe's character and reputation.
As a result Griswold's name has been almost uniformly
villified by literary historians, despite the fact that
the Poe fiasco was only one incident in a life filled with
literary occupations and events. Very little else is
remembered about Griswold. But Griswold was important in
the history of American letters and taste.
This study will trace Griswold's relationshiD with {
j
women and the literature they produced through the 1840's ‘
and early 50's. It is impossible to make such a study
without being critical of Griswold's views and of his
literary practices. Yet it is important not only to
understand the mistakes that Griswold made, but also the 1
man who produced them. This study relies heavily on
Griswold's letters and the letters of those who knew him
well to help us understand how Griswold functioned as an j
j
editor and the influences that helped to shape his book, j
The Female Poets of America. Only by looking at the man \
and the influences on him can we understand how and why
his anthology was produced. !
I
I
Though Griswold is almost entirely unknown now except
in relationship to Poe, his name was a familiar one in the
i
i
39
1840's and 50's. He was born on a farm in Benson, Vermont
on February 13, 1815, the twelfth of what would be
fourteen children. His father had worked as a shoemaker,
tanner, and farmer. His mother was a passionate reader
with a taste that ran largely to philosophy and theology.
From the beginning Rufus was a difficult child, moody and
restless. The quietness of life on the farm irritated
him; he longed for excitement and crowds. By the time he
was fifteen he had exhausted his parents' patience, and he
was sent to his older brother, Heman, in Troy, New York
that he might be enrolled in the Rensselaer School, an
institute which emphasized the sciences. Rufus responded
to this opportunity by playing a prank on a senior
professor and getting dismissed before he was even
enrolled. Heman decided to put Rufus where he could keep
an eye on him— behind the counter in his store.
It was while working in Heman's store that Griswold
met George G. Foster, a young man of twenty who would
change Rufus' life. Foster had had extensive experience
editing and writing in a number of Eastern periodicals.
In 1831 he was working across the river from Troy in
Albany, probably in a printing office. For Rufus, Foster
represented the wordliness and sophistication that he
longed for. After an argument with Heman, Rufus ran away
40
from hi© brother's home and moved in with Foster. For a
time it was a mutually satisfying relationship. Foster
was intensely emotional and Rufus, who had been raised by
I
stern New England parents, basked in Foster's affection. j
Foster introduced his protege to literature, especially
the Romantic poets, and the two often argued literary
values into the night.
I
So strong was Rufus' attachment to Foster that it was j
fully a year before the old restlessness caught up with j
the young Griswold again. In the spring of 1832 Griswold j
left Foster, anxious to get away from the mentor's
dependence on his protege. Griswold spent two years
moving from job to job, mostly in New York State, probably |
[
supporting himself as a journeyman printer. In the fall
i
of 1834 he worked for a time on the Syracuse
Constitutionalist with J. B. Clarke. In January 1835 he j
i
began his own paper, The Porcupine, a gossip sheet devoted I
j
to pointing out the faults of the good citizens of
Syracuse. By May the paper had folded, and Griswold's ,
employment became more sporadic again. In 1836 he secured
work on The Olean Advocate, a weekly paper designed to
advance the interests of the Olean Land and Hydraulic
i
Company of New York. He moved to Olean and for five
months was in active charge of the paper. By Christmas, {
I
41
however, he had left an assistant in charge and moved
himself and his belongings to New York City.
Griswold's lack of interest in this particular job
was largely due to his attraction to a young lady,
Caroline Searles, whom he had met in New York City on a
visit to his friend, Marcus Butler. On March 20, 1837 the
two were married, and Griswold moved into Caroline's home
I where she lived with her mother and brother. Griswold was
determined to establish himself in the city, and spent
several months looking for suitable employment with little
success. It was during this period that he made the
acquaintance of Horace Greeley, a budding young editor a
few years older than himself. There seemed to be no
suitable work available to the young husband, however, and
eventually Griswold found another post, this time in
Vermont, about forty miles from his parents' home. He
would edit a weekly paper called The Vergennes Vermonter.
Griswold's first issue appeared in February 1838 and a few
months later, after the birth of their first child,
Caroline joined him.
The young family spent a little over a year in
Vergennes. Caroline had a calming influence on her
husband. Where he was emotional and extravagant, she was
42
cool and saving. Her influence was not enough to keep
Griswold entirely out of trouble, however. Though
Griswold's paper was decidedly Whig in its perspective and j
i
advocated the nomination of Henry Clay to the presidency,
it also preached radical abolition, and eventually it
alienated both ends of the political spectrum. By spring
1839 Griswold had lost many of his subscribers, and he and
the family moved back to the city. When he could not find
permanent work on an established periodical, Griswold went
into partnership with Park Benjamin, a young man with
similar literary ambitions, and began to edit a penny
daily called The Evening Tatler and a weekly named Brother
Jonathan. These papers were sensationalist and gossipy;
i
they specialized in pointing out the flaws of the famous, j
but also included news and poetry. The partnership did
not last long. Both men argued with their publisher and
subsequently with each other. By the end of the summer
Griswold was again looking for work.
!
i i
This time Griswold received an offer that seemed '
made-to-order. Horace Greeley was going to edit a
i
political paper in Albany and would need someone he could j
trust to run The New-Yorker in his absence. Griswold
accepted the post gladly, and worked diligently from late
April 1840 to November. Greeley sent regular instructions j
43
from Albany and the arrangement might have lasted longer
if it had not been for Griswold's personal ambitions. He
had long wished for more editorial independence; he wanted •
to leave his mark on the literary community in some
permanent fashion. He had toyed first with the idea of an
anthological magazine, then a biographical dictionary.
I
Eventually he decided upon an anthology of American
poetry.
i
i
He left Griswold's employment in November, surprising
Greeley with his hasty departure and leaving the paper in
a mess, to be run by a young man fresh out of college.
Griswold headed for Philadelphia where the best publishers
were located and by February he had made an arrangement
I
with Carey and Hart to publish The Poets and Poetry of
America. It was by far the most comprehensive project he
had ever taken on, and it is a mark of Griswold's '
persuasiveness that he was able to convince this
well-known publishing firm that he was capable of doing
the job. Up to this time he had never held a job for more
than a few months; he seemed unable to finish projects or
* » * ■
follow through on his plans. He was, however, an avid
t
reader and book collector. His various editing jobs had
I
acquainted him with much of the writing of his day, and he ;
44
was determined to establish his reputation with this
book. He labored on it for over a year.
In 1842 The Poets and Poetry of America made its
appearance. It was the most comprehensive anthology of
American poetry of its time, and Griswold became something
of an overnight success. He was twenty-seven, full of
energy and ambition, when his first anthology was
published. Largely due to the success of The Poets and
Poetry of America, he was offered the job of associate
editor of Graham1s Magazine. a post he held from June 1842
to October 1843. He continued to publish anthologies
through the 1840's: Gems from American Female Poets in
1842, The Prose Writers of America in 1847, The Female
Poets of America in 1849. He also compiled a series of
gift books and books of readings for schools. From the
very beginning his books sold remarkably well, and his
reputation as an authority on American literature began
with his first anthology. After Griswold published The
Poets and Poetry of America, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote
to him: "I have no doubt— but of course you do not need
my assurance of it— that you have established yourself in
perpetuum as the classical authority for our country upon
the subject of its poets and poetry" (April 27, 1842,
PHi) .
45
After publishing The Poets and Poetry of America
Griswold's output increased dramatically. He published
over a dozen compilations in the 1840's, while writing
literary criticism and acting as editor for various
periodicals. He did all this is spite of the fact that he
was frequently ill, often seriously so, with ’
tuberculosis. What Griswold achieved in quantity,
however, he generally lost in quality. He was always in a
hurry with his books. He usually worked on several
projects at the same time, and as a result not one of his
anthologies was done as well as it ought to have been
done, or as well as Griswold could have done it. Grace
Greenwood once greeted Griswold in a letter by asking,
"How is your health, and what are you doing? I mean, how
many works are you engaged upon at present?" (Sara J.
Clarke to RWG, Dec. 22, 1842, PHi). Griswold’s friends
urged him to do his work more carefully. When Griswold
translated a volume of poetry by the French poet,
j Beranger, Horace Greeley upbraided "Friend Gris" for his
generally sloppy work:
Gris, you must not get up books so
jobbingly. You never will get above
journeyman’s wages unless you amend. 0 if you
only caught me once reviewing you in right
earnest, you would imagine your hide was off and
you in a hogshead of brine. Now if Beranger
goes to a second edition you must mend it. I
46
will [illegible] it if you don't. (Greeley to
RWG, Nov. 13, 1843, MB)
Griswold knew that his books were done "jobbingly,"
but he seemed unable to take the pains necessary for
really fine scholarship. He would begin work on a book
with thunder and enthusiasm, expecting it to be the finest
volume of its kind. He would end up rushing the project
to completion in order to get some bills paid off or to
meet a Dublication deadline. To make up for his haphazard i
j
research Griswold borrowed heavily from earlier
anthologies or from his own gift books for selections of
poetry. His literary friends often helped him by
composing biographical notices for some of the authors.
As a result Griswold was generally fearful, even paranoid,
about the critic's response to this kind of "patched up"
work.
i
i
In Griswold's defense, his anthologies were conceived j
on a much larger scale than those of his predecessors,
with the exception of Kettell. His books normally ran to
400 pages in quarto volumes. He included in them a larger ,
i
selection of authors than his colleagues had. If Griswold j
I
!
had conducted his research more thoroughly and given i
himself adequate time to go over his manuscripts before ;
r
they were published, his work would have been vastly |
4 7 j
I
improved. As it was, Griswold was infamous for his
haphazard way of gathering materials. He picked up
manuscripts from contributors and carried them around in
his coat pockets, often leaving them at friends' houses or
in various nooks and crannies of his rented rooms.
Charles Fenno Hoffman once teased him that he kept his
manuscripts in the bathtub (Barnes 242).
For all Griswold's lack of organization he was
profoundly serious about American literature. He made it
the work of his life to ferret out American poets and
prose writers and advance their work. He knew American
books better than anyone. His own library was
well-stocked. When he died in 1857 it contained 3,280
3
works, mostly by American authors. He became, in fact,
something of a caricature in his collecting of authors.
Hawthorne's 1843 "Hall of Fantasy" described Griswold
I
j thus: "I saw Mr. Rufus Griswold, with pencil and
! memorandum-book, busily noting down the names of all the
i
poets and poetesses there, and likewise of some whom
nobody but himself had suspected of ever visiting the
hall" (Feb. 1843; The Pioneer I, 51). Griswold's friend,
3. A catalogue of Griswold's books is available in the
University of California Research Library.
48
George Foster, described him similarly, if more kindly at
the same kind of party six years later:
Stalking about with an immense quarto
volume under his arm, (it is an early copy of
his forthcoming "Female Poets of America,") is a
thin, nervous man, his gray eyes looking shyly
about like a girl's, and his mouth twitching
every now and then, with the conception of a new
biography. He carries his head ponderingly upon
his shoulder, as if there were a good deal in
it— and so there is; for his room in the
University is crammed full of books, and he has
managed somehow to absorb the contents of most
of them into his own brain. In literary
topography he is a peripatetic gazeteer.
He is as familiar with the pedigree of every
tyro and blue-stocking, from the Fredoniad down,
as a Virginia turfman with that of his stable.
His memory is a miscellaneous storehouse of
celebrities of whom nobody has ever heard, and
of great poetesses who didn't know how to make
dumplings. (59)
Elizabeth Oakes Smith, a close friend who was
sometimes critical of Griswold, saw in him contradictions
between his serious interest in literature and his
childlike personality. She described him for Beadle"s
Monthly in May 1867:
Mr. Griswold was essentially a literary
man; he was a man of genius also— not of the
highest order, but unquestionably genius. Under
an appearance of almost indolent ease, he
covered untiring, indefatigable industry; and
the matter-of-fact industry conflicting with the
intimations of his own genius, gave him that
haIf-humorous, half-pathetic cast of mind and
character, which rendered him attractive to the
friends who best knew him.
49
He did not suggest idealism, as Poe and
Hoffman always did, but something child-like,
quaint, half-mischievous, instead; but, start
the subject of an American author, a book by an
American author, and he smelt the battle afar
off like the war-horse, and all his humor and
apparent contradictions vanished; he was at once
in earnest; he grew eloquent, dogmatized, and
bore down all opposition. Here he had clear,
well-defined ideas, and asserted them
fearlessly. His whims disappeared and opinions
took their place. (Ill, 438-39)
Both Griswold's strengths and weaknesses would
strongly influence the anthologies he began publishing in
the 1840's.
1
i
50
_____i
Chapter 2
A Biographical Warwick
In the early 1840's Rufus Griswold undertook several
literary projects that would acquaint him with literature
written by women and would form his opinions of both the
literature and the women who produced it. Griswold was
not a man with a reflective disposition. Once he had
established an opinion of a particular writer his opinion
did not alter much except under the most unusual
circumstances. With very few exceptions the friends and
literary alliances that Griswold made in the early 1840's
were the friends and alliances he maintained until his
death. More importantly for this study, the opinions
Griswold formed of certain women authors and poets in the
early 1840's were the ones that would inform The Female
Poets of America in 1849.
The editing that Griswold did in the early 40's also
set a pattern for the way that he would compile his later
books. Griswold did not work alone. He relied, sometimes
51
too heavily, on the influence of male, and occasionally
female, colleagues in compiling his anthologies. He
depended on earlier anthologies in making selections of
poets and poetry to include in his own compilations.
Griswold's use of these earlier anthologies was haphazard
and piecemeal. He did not, in any systematic way, spread
out the available literature before him and try to
objectively judge the comparative value of the extant
writers. His anthologies were hurried, patched-up
affairs; one biographical notice might reflect the opinion
of one of Griswold's colleagues, a particular selection of
poems might indicate the opinions of another. Griswold
himself might tack a paragraph on to one biographical
notice so that it might reflect his own views more
accurately; if he were pressed for time it might go in
i
! untouched.
!
! Griswold's editing of women's writing began with his
I
work on The Poets and Poetry of America. The importance
of this book to Griswold's career can hardly be
overemphasized. In working on it Griswold developed a
method of organizing and operating that he would use on
all of his other anthologies. The research that he did
for The Poets and Poetry of America gave him the
background that he needed in order to become an "expert"
52
in American literature. Perhaps most important of all The
Poets and Poetry of America introduced him to the right
people. It gave him a place in literary society and made
him a highly sought-after friend for both established and
would-be poets.
Griswold's plan to bring American literature together
in some fashion or another was formulated early.
Originally he planned to publish a magazine to be called
the Anthology. He published a prospectus for the magazine
in September 1837 and was occupied by this idea, as his
letters indicate (Passages 22-23), through the spring of
1840. By April 1840 the title had been changed to The
Poets and Poetry of America which Griswold hoped to
publish out of New York in monthly parts (RWG to J. T.
Fields, April 7 [1840], CSmH). Financial difficulties
i
{ seem to have been the main reason that this magazine never
went to press. Griswold was young, only twenty-five in
the spring of 1840, and had neither money of his own nor
influential financial backers to support such a project.
It was much less risky therefore to publish The Poets
and Poetry of America as a book and let the publishers
bear the cost. The work on the book began in earnest
around January 1841 when Griswold began rounding up his
53
friends to help him get information on the poets and write
biographical notices to be included in the work (Passages
56-57; 58-59). There was plenty of work for Griswold to
do himself. He researched the volume, as he said in his
preface, by looking at
about five hundred volumes of rhythmical
compositions of various kinds and degrees of
merit, nearly all of which I read with more or
less attention. From the mass I chose about
one-fifth, as containing writings not unworthy
of notice in such an examination of this part of
our literature as I proposed to make. (3)
The Poets and Poetry of America consisted of a "main"
section, where Griswold included those he considered
full-fledged poets, and an appendix for the lesser
lights. Horace Greeley had apparently given Griswold the
suggestion to divide the poets into classes.
Aren't you going to have an appendix to
your volume containing one or more pieces from
such writers as may have casually written a good
thing or so, but have no claim or desire to be
considered Poets? Depend on it this will be
better than to cram them into such company as
you must otherwise do. (Passages 60)
Greeley went on to suggest which poets belonged in which
category.
Griswold included a total of 157 poets, sixty-nine of j
whom were relegated to the Appendix. Griswold generally [
tended to err on the side of including too many poets
54
rather than too few, as he himself knew. He told his
readers in the preface:
This volume embraces specimens from
numerous authors; and though it may not contain
the names of all who deserve admission, the
judicious critic will be more likely to censure
me for the wide range of my selections than for
any omissions he may discover." (vi)
Approximately 16* of the poets included were women, ten in j
the main section and fifteen in the appendix. Griswold
stated in his preface to The Poets and Poetry of America
that he had attempted to include "as much good verse as
possible that is new and inaccessible to the general
reader" (vii), by avoiding the work of some poets that had
been frequently printed in books and anthologies and by
searching out less well-known works in the periodicals.
That claim of originality did not really hold true for
!
most of the women's poetry in Griswold's volume. As far j
as their work was concerned Griswold depended much more on
I
the already-published anthologies than on the periodicals i
for his selections.
I ,
I
I
Of the ten women poets in the main section of The
Poets and Poetry of America nine of them had appeared in
anthologies published before Griswold's. More than half
of the poems included in The Poets and Poetry of America
were from these earlier anthologies. For example, Hannah \
Gould had been included in Bryant, Keese, and Hale. Five
of the seven selections of her work in Griswold's volume
i
had been included earlier in Keese and Hale. Lydia
Sigourney had been included in several early anthologies;
seven of the eighteen poems in The Poets and Poetry of
America had been included in Hale's anthology. Lucy
Hooper had been included in Keese and Bryant; of the four
poems Griswold included, one each was chosen from Keese
and Bryant.
Griswold's dependence on the earlier anthologies is
also apparent in the Appendix. Of the fifteen women poets
included there ten had been included in earlier
anthologies. For seven of those ten women Griswold
republished poems that had appeared in earlier
anthologies. The women in the Appendix had one poem
published for each, with the exception of Frances Osgood
I
j who had two poems published. For three of the women who 1
i
■ had been included in the earlier anthologies and for the
; other five selections that Griswold made, he chose the
I
' i
poems for himself, probably from poems published in the j
periodicals or in individual volumes. I
i
I
i
Griswold's selections also showed a heavy influence !
I
from the friends he had called on to help him gather |
information. P. W. Thomas, whom Griswold hired to write
some biographical sketches for the work, encouraged
Griswold to include western writers, especially George D.
Prentice and Anna Peyre Dinnies. "I should think," said
Thomas, "that favorable sketches of these individuals
would tend much to increase the sale of your work in the
West— and that section of country, like all young mothers,
feels a pride in her first born in literature as well as
in other matters" (Passages 66). Thomas drew Griswold's
attention to Gallagher's Specimens of Western Poetry as a
source of selection for The Poets and Poetry of America.
Griswold was almost certainly aware of Gallagher's
i
work— his choice of Amelia Welby was made independently of j
Thomas' suggestions and was probably a result of
Gallagher— but Thomas may have influenced him to include
S
I
Laura Thurston, one of Gallagher's inclusions.
John Keese provided aid and advice beyond the
influence that his 1840 anthology had given. He was
| especially influential in regards to the poetry of Emma
j Embury. He wrote to Griswold on January 20, 1842 after
having visited Mrs. Embury, urging him to promote Mrs. i
Embury's reputation in the biographical notice: j
She is very willing and in fact anxious to
leave [the writing of the biographical notice]
entirely to me & I think that you had better !
57
prepare it, she is a lady of very high poetical
character and her productions which are
scattered through the periodical possess much
merit— I think you had better prepare the
Memoire yourself & do it in your best style, she
certainly deserves all the literary praise that
you can bestow . . . Her poetry is certainly
far above Mrs. Sigourney's, Mrs. Osgood's, Mrs.
Ellet's and "all that ilk" & if you will do her
up in your best style, I will esteem it a very
great favour. Take especial pains with it &
make it scholarlike and with your characteristic
degree of composition. (Jan. 20, 1842, MB)
Keese included biographical information in this
letter which would help Griswold compose the sketch. A
week later, on January 27, he sent five poems of Embury's,
four of which were included in The Poets and Poetry of
4
America. Griswold chose three other poems to complete
the selections for Emma Embury, one of which had earlier
been included in Keese's anthology ["Ballad"]. Keese also
asked Griswold to send him the proof of Embury's
biographical sketch once it had been printed (Jan. 20,
1842, MB) so that Keese could "make some suggestions.”
The proof arrived and Keese returned it on February 15
"without alteration," but with a couple of "suggestions"
for changes in wording and correction of certain facts
(MB). Keese withdrew one of the five poems originally
suggested, "The Poetic Impulse," as Mrs. Embury intended
4. The poems included "The Old Man's Lament," "Peace,"
"Stanzas," and a sonnet; Jan. 27, 1842, MB.
58
i
___________i
to publish it elsewhere and sent an unnamed replacement
which may be one of the remaining two choices included in
The Poets and Poetry of America. Keese wrote again on
February 26 with suggestions of poems by Anna Peyre
Dinnies and an offer to send information for Lucy Hooper's
biographical sketch (Feb. 26, 1842, PHi).
Horace Greeley also left his mark on The Poets and
Poetry of America. He encouraged Griswold to include
poets who had been published in the (New-Yorker), among
them several women:
Remember some Yorker poets in your volume
of Poetry if consistent with the quiet of a good
conscience, which is to be regarded above all
things. In especial, "Rizpah" by B. F. Ransom,
something by "J.H.K." or J.H.S. (formerly Julia
H. Kinney, now Mrs. H. Scott of Towanda, Pa.) a
scrap from Mary Emily Jackson if it will do, and
something from Wm. H. Burleigh anyhow. W. H. C.
Hosmer and Mrs. E. J. Eames ought to be
considered and not kicked aside because they
have never been in a volume. Try to give a fair
chance to the unknown to fame, but don't spoil
your volume with them. (Passages 51)
Julia Scott had not appeared in any earlier anthologies
and was included in the Appendix as a result of Greeley's
suggestion. Greeley probably suggested the inclusion of
Elizabeth Ellet as well, since he wrote her biographical
sketch (Passages 102).
Greeley's suggestion of Mrs. Eames is an interesting
one. As a young, man Greeley had been very much in love
with Elizabeth Jessup [Eames* maiden name], and would have
married her but for the interference of her father who did
not feel that Greeley's prospects were promising enough.
Instead he married Elizabeth off to Mr. Eames whose
business failed six weeks after their marriage. Elizabeth
published regularly in Greeley's New Yorker and in the
Tribune. Griswold did not include her in The Poets and
Poetry of America, but he did include her in his later
anthology The Female Poets of America.
Greeley's most enduring influence on Griswold's view
of women writers at this time, however, was on the
relationship between Griswold and Lydia Sigourney. As I
have already mentioned, Sigourney was the most widely
known female poet at the time The Poets and Poetry of
America was published. She was not, however, a great
! favorite of Horace Greeley's, and he seems to have
influenced his old friend, Rufus Griswold, with his
opinion. Griswold had contracted with Greeley to write
the biographical sketch of Sigourney, a job Greeley found
tedious and distasteful. He wrote to Griswold on November
5, 1841:
60
I haven't done anything I promised you— and
why? Because I couldn't. I went to see Mr.
Root on Tuesday, but could find nothing out.
Root did not know her [Mrs. Sigourney] till she
lived in Hartford. So I have no data; and where
can I get any? I don't know, I'm sure. So I do
nothing, and wait to hear from you. (Passages
101)
Some facts of Mrs. Sigourney's life were well known.
She was very unhappily married to Charles Sigourney who
seemed unable to provide a living and yet objected to the
notoriety his wife received when she provided an income
with her poetry. Greeley was certainly aware of
I
I
Sigourney's personal life. On November 13, 1841 he wrote i
to Griswold: "I shall try to plaster over Mrs. Sigourney
tomorrow; but you know how bad a job it is. As it won't
do to say a word of her real history, how will it be
possible to say any think?" (Passages 102, Greeley's \
spelling). The biography became even more difficult to
write when Greeley misplaced the list of her works. He
I took a philosophical attitude toward the mishap: "This
i
isn't a good biography; I've lost the list of her works,
but that is no loss at all. The biography is less humdrum j
without it. You can carve and plaster to suit your taste" ,
(Passages 102).
Greeley wore another face when dealing with Mrs.
*
Sigourney. He wrote to her on March 7, 1842 to tell her !
that she was criticized in Griswold's book. He mentioned
his having told Griswold
that yourself and Mrs. H. F. Gould are
especially touched unkindly; a brief sketch of
your life and writings which I have been
requested to furnish being thrown out, and a
briefer of different tenor substituted. I doubt
not but this criticism is honest, yet it has
caused me some pain in view of the anxiety I
felt that the notice of your writings should
have been different. (Haight 111)
In fact, the sketch of Mrs. Sigourney that was
finally published was very much as Greeley describes his
own. It briefly mentioned her marriage, lingering longer
on the parts of her life that were less problematic. It
also mentioned only a handful of her published works or
individual poems. It seems likely that that the sketch
was, in large part, actually Greeley's work only
shortened, "carved and plastered" by Griswold to fit his
needs. Griswold probably found Greeley's sketch too
long. Even the shortened sketch that Griswold finally
published was longer than most of the other sketches of
the women poets.
One part of the sketch was undoubtedly Griswold's,
however. The last paragraph evalutes Sigourney's work
thus:
Mrs. Sigourney has surpassed any of the
poets of her sex in this country in the extent
62
of her productions; and their religious and
domestic character has made them popular with
the large classes who regard more than artistic
merit the spirit and tendency of what they
read. Her subjects are varied, and her diction
generally melodious and free; but her works are
written too carelessly; they lack vigour and
condensation; and possess but few of the
elements of enduring verse. Very little poetry,
save that of scholars, finished with extreme
care and skill, belongs to the permanent
literature of any language. (190)
It was almost certainly this passage that Greeley
especially wished to disavow. He wrote to Mrs. Sigourney
again on March 16 with more criticism of Griswold:
He [Griswold] excused himself to me for not
inserting my notice of your life and writings by
saying he had lost or mislaid it— which I
inferred he had done purposely, and which I
preferred to have done rather than have it
altered. As it is, I think the extracts
embodied in his work will overbear the
critique. Believe me, I have done what I could
to have it otherwise; and perhaps I should feel
satisfied that it is no worse though I am not.
(Haight 112-113)
Greeley's duplicity did much to create bad blood
between Mrs. Sigourney and Rufus Griswold. While Griswold
was not attracted to the kind of religious poetry
Sigourney wrote (he thought her verses "very pious"), he
was well aware of the popularity of her poetry and even
after this incident she was a regular contributor to
Graham1s Magazine while Griswold was editor. But
63
Mrs. Sigourney never trusted Griswold as a result of this
encounter, and friendship between the two was impossible,
though they frequently worked together.
While The Poets and Poetry of America was heavily
influenced by earlier anthologies and Griswold's
I
colleagues in the publishing world, it also reflected j
Griswold's own ideas about women's writing. Griswold had
accepted the idea that women occupied a different sphere
from men, and therefore their lives and their poetry would
never closely resemble those of men. He began the the
biographical sketch for Emma Embury, the one that John
Keese had hoped would establish Embury's reputation, by
1
I
saying: j
The history of a woman of genius, more than ^
that of a man possessing the same intellectual j
qualities, is usually unmarked by events of the I
kind which interest the general reader of
biography. Her life is but a succession of
thoughts and emotions, and he who would i
understand these must study her writings. (318) i
I
Though Griswold attributes to women the "same
i
intellectual qualities" as men, the emphasis of this ^
statement is that women are born for seclusion, for the j
thoughts and emotions of the private life rather than the J
public one. Their poetry will be emotional, rather than J
intellectual. As he said in the biographical sketch for i
I
I
I
I
64
Amelia Welby, a poet he really admired and whose work he
would soon begin to promote: "[Welby] has feeling, and
fancy, and pure sentiment— the highest qualities that ever
distinguish the poetry of women" (430).
Griswold was more directly critical of women poets in
the biographical sketch for Maria Brooks. He greatly
admired Brooks' poetry and wished to separate it from the
mass of women's writing.
We have in America few women who devote
their lives to literature, and produce artistic
works. There are many who write 'fugitive
pieces,' calculated to give no offence, rather
than to excite admiration, or provoke
criticism. Commonplace sentiments are smoothly
versified; but the scrupulous nicety of the
public in regard to decorum, or the modesty of
authors, prevents the sincere, bold, and natural
expression of strong emotion. Prudery and
affectation are everywhere offensive; but in
poetry they are unpardonable. (148)
Griswold went on to declare that Brooks "is the only
American poet of her sex whose mind is thoroughly
educated. . . . Learning, brilliant imagination, and
masculine boldness of thought and diction, are
characteristics of her works" (150). Boldness and
learning were, to Griswold's way of thinking, male
characteristics and not female ones.
65
Griswold mixed criticism with flattery in his
evaluations of various female poets in the biographical
sketches. Of Hannah Gould he said:
Among American poets of the second class,
Miss Gould has a high rank. Without much force
of imagination, delicacy of fancy, or affluence
of language, she has acquired popularity by the
purity of her thoughts, and the deep moral and
religious feeling she infuses into her
compositions. (108)
Though the poetry of Amelia Welby "has a musical flow and
harmony, and the ideas are often poetical" she is "not a
scholarlike artist" (430). Horace Greeley saw comments j
such as these when he looked over the proofs of Griswold’s j
book and wrote to Mrs. Sigourney: "Griswold is so i
<
determined a contemner of the intellectual equality of Men
and Women that I think he has hardly commended any Female
Poet save Maria G. Brooks" (Haight 111).
)
I
i
Some of the women poets included in Griswold's volume j
seem to be included more for their novelty than their
t
ability. Griswold was fascinated by poets that began i
producing poetry as children. Amelia Welby, Lucy Hooper,
and the Davidson sisters were examples of these prodigies
that wrote poetry in their teens. Griswold devoted
several pages to their biographical sketch of Lucretia and
Margaret Davidson so that he could tell the miraculous |
i
(
66 !
story of these child prodigies. Griswold's effusive
description makes the sisters sound more like a circus
exhibit than like serious poets. Their performance in
poetry was a part of America's history of miraculous and
astonishing events.
Those who have read the preceding memoirs
may remember that an unusual precocity of genius
has been frequently exhibited in this country.
The cases of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson are
doubtless more interesting than any to which I
have already alluded, but they are not the most
wonderful that have been known in America.
About two years ago I was shown, by one of the
house of Harper and Brothers, the publishers,
some verses by a girl but eight years of age,
the daughter of a gentlemen in Connecticut— that
seemed superior to any composed by the
Davidsons; and I have heard of other prodigies
no less remarkable. (432)
Griswold compared the sisters, who attained a high
level of poetry by age nine, but who "exhibited no
progress" in their poetic maturity after that age, to the
"wonderful boy Zerah Colburn" of Vermont who did
complicated mathematical calculations as a child, but did
not grow up to be brilliant (emphasis RWG). Greeley
described Griswold's treatment of the Davidsons to Mrs.
Sigourney: "The Davidsons are very calmly tomahawked .
." (Haight 113).
One of the significant results of Griswold's editing :
| of The Poets and Poetry of America was that he became much
i ;
A i
V 67) !
more familiar with women's poetry, and, in fact, began to
sponsor several of the women included in his volume.
Amelia Welby was one of these poets. She was a Western
poet who had been publishing in the Louisville Daily
Journal since 1837. Griswold had encountered her in
Gallagher's Specimens of the Poetical Literature of the
West and from the suggestion of his friend, F. W. Thomas.
After The Poets and Poetry of America was published
Griswold wrote to Welby, probably in February 1843, asking
her to contribute poetry to Graham's Magazine which he was
then editing and offering to help her get her poetry
published in a volume. Welby responded on June 30 with
the apparent modesty and lack of ambition required of the
female poet. She would like to publish a volume because i
I
her "husband and friends desire greatly to have a |
!
collection of my little poems published" though the poems
themselves "are not worth it" (June 30, 1843, MB). The
result was Poems by Amelia published in 1845, the only
volume of poetry Welby ever published. j
The most unusual poet Griswold uncovered in his
research for The Poets and Poetry of America was Maria
1
i Brooks, who also wrote under the name Maria del
Occidente. Brooks wrote poetry far different from her
female colleagues. She was given to long epic poems with
I
I
68
Biblical typology and female protagonists. She had
published a volume of poetry in 1820 entitled Judith,
Esther and Other Poems by "A Lover of the Fine Arts.'1 Her
long poem, Zophiel, was published in 1833 with the aid of
Robert Southey, whom Brooks met on a trip to England.
Brooks' own life reflected the highly-wrought emotions of
her poetry. She was unhappily married to her guardian and
was obsessed with a Canadian officer whom she never
married.
When Griswold met Brooks in New York in the early
summer of 1842, probably in May or June, he was
thunderstruck. He wrote to James T. Fields: "Touching
Maria Brooks— she .is a wonderful woman: I have never seen
her compeer. She talked as volubly as any woman, but not
as women talk" (July 10, [1842], CSmH). Griswold wrote to
Brooks asking if he could visit and possibly publish some
of her poetry in Graham1s. She responded with a long
letter discussing her poetry and asking whether he knew of
anyone who might be interested in helping her to publish
one of her long poems, Idomen: or the Vale of Yumuri (June
18, 1842, PHi). She also corrected some of Griswold's
mistakes in her biographical sketch in The Poets and
Poetry of America. This was the first of many letters
between Brooks and Griswold. Griswold was unable to get a
69
regular publisher for Idomen, but he helped her to publish
it privately in 1843 and introduced her to some of his New
York literary society friends (George Cheever to RWG, Oct.
25, 1843, PHi). When Brooks died of tropical fever in
Cuba in 1845, Charles Fenno Hoffman asked Griswold to
write her obituary (Hoffman to RWG, Dec. 29, 1845, MB).
Elizabeth Oakes Smith became one of Griswold's close
female friends from the time of her publication in
Griswold's anthology, though he felt more respect for her
than she for him. Elizabeth and her husband, Seba Smith,
the author of the Jack Downing stories, had moved to New
York from Portland, Maine in 1837 after suffering some
financial losses. Both Henry Tuckerman and James T.
Fields, close friends of Griswold's, had taken an interest
in the Smiths' troubles, and it is likely that Griswold
met Elizabeth through these friends (Passages 66). In
January 1842 Seba Smith sent some of his wife's poems to
Louis Godey via Rufus Griswold, and by May Griswold had
sought employment for Elizabeth at Graham1s Magazine where
he had just been appointed associate editor.
Elizabeth was appreciative of Griswold's help in her
career, but did not hesitate to criticize him. In one of
her early letters to him she praised The Poets and Poetry
70
of America as "attracting a great deal of attention" and
thanked him for including her, "though there are something
[sicl I could have wished otherwise in your arrangements"
([May] 17, 1842, PHi). Despite Smith's complaint about
her section of The Poets and Poetry of America, she and
Griswold were soon fast friends. Both harbored a dislike
for Ann Stephens, another female poet, Griswold because
she was a contributing editor at Graham1s and had
threatened to depose him as associate editor, and Smith
because she felt competitive with the established
Stephens. Smith approached the subject of Mrs. Stephens
cautiously until she knew Griswold’s views calling her
"extremely well appreciated" and "admirably adapt[ed] .
to the position of literary woman" in the first
letter to Griswold (May 1842, PHi).
By June, however, Oakes Smith was openly critical of
Stephens and wrote to Griswold:
Ah, how enviable are such people as General
Morris and Miss Stephens, who each imagine
themselves to fill the space of the whole
world. They are pretty sure too, to make the
dear public hold the same opinion, and they get
paid accordingly. Miss Stephens was telling me
about the prices she received for her writings.
It all but made me jealous and envious too, for
you know they go together. Can you not give a
lesson in humbug? It is useless though, for I
am too stupid, and too ridiculously honest to
practice it, so I will e'en go starve. (June
23, 1842, PHi)
71 1
i
_____I
She assured Griswold that "if ever [Stephens] were in love
with you do not flatter yourself that such is the case
now" (June 23, 1842, PHi).
Elizabeth Oakes Smith became one of the principal
contributors to Graham * s which helped ease her financial
worries. Griswold helped her when she needed an advance
(Smith to RWG, June 23, 1842, PHi) and sent suggestions
for possible article topics (Smith to RWG, August 1842,
PHi). Griswold and Tuckerman promoted Oakes Smith's work
among their literary friends in New York. Tuckerman
publicized Oakes Smith's The Western Captive published in
1842. Griswold helped The Sinless Child to be published
in 1843 and got Hoffman to write a friendly review of it
(RWG to Smith, April 17, n.y., MB).
On April 18, 1842 The Poets and Poetry of America
made its appearance (Carey and Hart to RWG, April 18,
1842, MB). The public had been well prepared for it.
Greeley had announced it in the New Yorker in February
1841, and in the March 22 Tribune he included a "tall puff
of 'The Poets,'" though he "had to fight [to get it in}
while a great many others were left out." More praise
appeared in the Tribune on April 21 and June 2. Greeley
72
boasted that "[i]f 'The Poets' do not sell, the fault
shall not be mine" (Passages 106).
The reviews were mostly favorable. The Knickerbocker
was the most enthusiastic, calling the book "by far the
most satisfactory and in every way the best collection of
American poetry that has ever been made." No one was "so
well fitted by his studies and his tastes for precisely
such a work as this, as the Rev. RUFUS W. GRISWOLD" (June
l
1842; XIX, 584-85). The Southern Literary Messenger j
i
i
declared that "from no previous work could one-tenth of
the information here collected be obtained— not one-fourth
of it from all preceding works together" (May 1842; VIII,
360). Graham's called the book "the best of its i
class— affording, at one view, the justest idea of our
poetical literature" (May 1842; XX, 300).
Not every review was so complimentary. Graham's j
»
published a full-length review in June that questioned
j
Griswold's choices of both poets and poems. The reviewer
suggested that Griswold favored New England poets and !
| underestimated the younger poets such as Holmes and Lowell j
(June 1842; XX, 356). The Southern Quarterly Review j
called the book "a collection of the poetry chiefly of the ;
Northern States" (July 1842; 268). A few reviews were
I
i
t
vicious, most notably that of Brother Jonathan, a few
merely snide: the August Democratic Review objected to
Griswold's indiscriminate inclusion of both poets and
versifiers and suggested the title "The Poets, Poetry, and
Poetasters of America" (Aug. 1842; XI, 177).
The end result of all this attention was that the
book sold. The first edition of a thousand copies was
exhausted by July; in a second edition five hundred were
printed and another five hundred came out in December
(Bayless 47). The book continued to be printed in editions
of five hundred to one thousand copies once or twice
yearly until after Griswold's death. Griswold's friends
had much to crow about. Greeley called the book "really
the American Poets— nothing before equal to it" (qtd. in
Haight 113). Charles Fenno Hoffman dubbed Griswold the
"biographical Warwick,— 'The setter up and puller down of
Kings' (poetic ones)" (Barnes 223).
The Poets and Poetry of America was the first
anthology that Griswold undertook to write, but it was not
the first that he published. While he was working on The
Poets and Poetry of America he was becoming more and more
familiar with the poetry written by women, and late in
1841 he was asked to put together a gift book of American
74
women poets which was to be titled Gems from American
Female Poets. The book was commissioned by Herman Hooker,
a Philadelphia printer, and it was a "job" book if there
ever was one. Griswold wrote to his friend James T.
Fields in late November telling him of the project: "I
have edited for Hooker & [Aguere?] a little book entitled
•Gems from the Female Poets of America.' It was done in 2
[to] 4 days and I was loathe to put ray name to it; but the
publishers insisted on it. You will get it next week" j
(Nov. 27, 1841, CSraH).
1
Griswold may or may not have been exaggerating when
he said he spent only two to four days on the book. He
was obviously ashamed of the book and by emphasizing the
limited time he had spent on it he may have hoped to J
j
exonerate himself from a poor oerformance. Griswold was
i
suffering from tuberculosis when he put Gems together; !
this likely affected the quality of his work on it. On |
|
the other hand, it is possible that Griswold spent no more j
I
time on Gems than he said. He repeated the claim to Edwin
Percy Whipple that the book the work of about four days
(RWG to Whipple, Jan. 17, 1842, CtY), and the book itself
tends to support such a claim. j
75 !
(
For one thing, Gems from American Female Poets was
very heavily indebted to The Poets and Poetry of America
which Griswold had nearly finished. All of the women
poets included in Poets and Poetry were included also in
Gems. To these Griswold added fourteen more poets, likely
some of those he had chosen to leave out of the larger
volume. In choosing poems for Gems from American Female
Poets Griswold borrowed heavily from The Poets and Poetry
of America also borrowed from Hale, Gallagher, Bryant,
Keese, and Kettell's earlier anthologies. Nearly sixty
percent of the poems came from these sources and it is
easy to imagine the other poems being those he already had
on hand for the preparation of The Poets and Poetry of
America.
Griswold knew how "jobbingly" the volume had been put
together and felt some chagrin when Whipple wrote a
complimentary review of it. He wrote to Whipple on
January 17 in response: "Thanks for that kind notice of
the feminine verse-makers. The book deserved no praise,
for it was 'jumped' together in about four days, and
incorrectly printed; a new and enlarged edition will be
better" (Jan. 17, 1842, CtY). It was probably
embarassment over the hasty editing of the book that kept
him from sending Fields a copy for nearly two years after
the book was published. He finally sent Fields a first
edition only when the second edition, published in 1844,
was about to come out. When he did send a copy he also
explained to Fields the poor quality of his editing:
I collected its contents very hastily, and
did not read the proof sheets. The authors are
arranged, as you will see, chronologically, and
the required number of pages was filled before
two-thirds of the copy was printed. Mr. Hodkin
will soon print a second and enlarged edition
and I shall leave such directions as will insure
the insertion of what I promised. (Nov. 11,
1843, CSmH)
Griswold was less apologetic with the public, though
he confessed to haste in preparing the volume. In the
preface to the first edition he explained:
This little volume of "gems" from the
writings of the female poets of America, has
been prepared within the few days required to
stereotype it. Had it not been necessary to
complete it within a limited period, the editor
might have presented samples from a greater
number of authors; though it is questionable
whether he would have added to its value. (9)
It is interesting to speculate which poets Griswold would
have included had he not run out of space. Since all of
the women poets included in The Poets and Poetry of
America are included in Gems it is doubtful that he left
off anyone that he considered first rate.
77
Of the forty women included in Gems from the American
Female Poets fourteen had not been included in Griswold's
Poets and Poetry. Four of these women— Eliza Follen, Mary
E. Lee, Anna Maria Wells, and Caroline Gilman— had had
their poetry represented in earlier anthologies. The
remaining ten were truly original choices by Griswold.
For the most part these were women who published in the
periodical press, but had not had their poetry printed in
a more permanent form. It is interesting to note that
eight out of ten of these women were placed in the last
third of Gems from American Female Poets. While Griswold
had told Fields that his poets were arranged
"chronologically," he had, in fact, done nothing of the
kind. Maria Brooks, born in 1794, showed up at the end of
the book while Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, born in 1807,
appeared fourth. Eliza Follen, born in 1787, appeared
after Elizabeth Ellet, born around 1812. Griswold's
apparent method of organization was to place the most
established poets toward the beginning of the book and
fill in the rest of the book with less established poets.
Had Griswold included all of the poets he had originally
intended, he would probably have filled the rest of the
book with these less well-known poets.
Griswold relied heavily on his research for The Poets
and Poetry of America when compiling Gems, but he also
depended on earlier anthologists, particularly Sarah
Josepha Hale. Griswold's use of her 1837 anthology for
information on women poets is perhaps more obvious here
than in The Poets and Poetry of America. The biographical
notices in Gems were very short and almost all of the
facts included in them were available in Hale, which
contained two to three pages on each poet. For example,
to Lydia Sigourney's and Hannah Gould's notices Griswold ;
added only their hometowns to information originally in ;
J
I
Hale. To Sarah Louisa P. Smith's notice he added the full
name of Smith's husband and the precise date of the
publishing of her poems. To Lucretia Maria Davidson he
added the fact that Catherine Sedgwick had written a !
!
memoir of Davidson. To Fanny Osgood he added her father's
full name and her birthdate. All the rest of the material
in their biographical notices was easily obtainable in
Hale.
I
I
j
Certain notices are very obviously dependent on
Hale. Hale mentioned Boston as the childhood home of Anna
Maria Wells and did not mention any move after that.
i
Griswold said that Wells is "believed to be in Boston"
79
(Gems 129). Griswold is also apparently dependent on Hale !
when he corrects her errors. Hale called the literary
journal that Caroline Gilman's husband edited "The
Southern Rosebud." Griswold repeated information found in
Hale, but correctly entitled the journal "The Southern
Rose." He likewise borrowed from Hale for the notice of t
Elizabeth Ellet, but correctly titled her work "Sketches !
of American Character" not "Sketches of American
Characters" as Hale had done.
Gems from American Female Poets did not attract a
great deal of attention. It was, after all, just another
i
gift book and a tiny one at that. It measured about 3" by ;
4 1/2" and crammed forty poets into 192 of these tiny j
i
pages. No poet was allowed more than a handful of poems.
It was, however, a pretty volume, with a purple cover,
I
gilt-edged pages and an elaborate Victorian design on the
covers and spine. The reception of the public was !
i
I positive enough to require the second printing in 1844 and j
in that same year a second volume. Gems from the American
Poets— these poets were all male— was published in the
same format. Griswold did not make it a practice to ask
permission to include a poet's work in his anthologies and
so a poet was sometimes surprised to discover her work in
an anthology, but at least some of the poets included in
80
Gems from American Female Poets were aware of the book's
publication. For example, Maria Brooks complained to
Griswold of having a middle initial— "A."— added to her
name, a mistake that Griswold copied from Kettell and made
only in Gems.
i
Gems from American Female Poets was important because
it introduced Griswold to the market for women's writing.
One of Griswold's unique talents was an ability to read
the literary market. His experience in producing The
Poets and Poetry of America taught him that Americans were
anxious to read and pay for large, comprehensive
anthologies of American literature. His experience in j
producing Gems from American Female Poets taught him that
women's writing might prove popular with the public and
his interest in their work grew accordingly.
With the success of The Poets and Poetry of America
Griswold became a well-known literary figure. The
immediate result of Griswold's newfound prominence was
that George Graham asked him to help in the editing of j
5 !
Graham's Magazine, replacing Poe fPassages 106). The new ;
5. Passages incorrectly dates this letter as April 20,
1842. The actual date is April 19, 1842 according to the
catalogue of the Boston Public Library. [
position would require Griswold to move to Philadelphia,
leaving his wife and children in New York. Caroline was
expecting their third child and could not undergo the
strain of the move and setting up of a new home. Yet by
May 3 Griswold had accepted the post and by May 16 was
busy with his new duties. An editorial chair at Graham1s
was a feather in his cap and a financial boon; the
magazine was lavish and popular. Only Godey1s gave it any
real competition. Graham1s was also a new publication.
In 1839 George Graham had bought The Casket, a miscellany
with a wide circulation; he bought Burton's Gentleman1s
Magazine in 1840. He then combined the two into Graham1s
Ladies1 and Gentlemen's Magazine which began publication
in January 1841.
At Graham1s Griswold widened his association with
women writers. Graham had published the poetry of several
women in his earlier magazines, and Griswold thus became
! familiar with their work even when he did not meet them
personally. Catherine Waterman had been virtually the
only female contributor to Burton1s Gentlemen * s Magazine
under Graham's direction. Margaret St. Leon Loud and
Elizabeth Clementine Stedman had contributed to The
Casket. Before Griswold began to work at Graham's, his
employer had published poems from Rebecca S. Nichols and
82
had coaxed Emma Embury into being a regular contributor
(Embury to Graham, Oct. 25, 1841, PHi). As a result of
his association with Graham, Griswold later included all
of these women in The Female Poets of America.
The pages of Graham*s made it clear, however, which
poets Griswold liked. Frances S. Osgood and Elizabeth
Oakes Smith were published more frequently in Graham1s
than any other women poets. Oakes Smith operated largely
under Griswold's sponsorship and sometimes feared that
Graham himself was not as impressed with her talent as her
mentor was (Smith to RWG, May 1842, PHi). During the j
eighteen months that Griswold was an editor for Graham1s j
she published six poems, five stories, and two articles in
the magazine. Fanny Osgood was not a close friend of
Griswold's at this time, but Griswold was clearly
impressed with her poetry. During his tenure he published
seven of her poems, more than any other woman's, and three |
i
stories during his tenure.
Griswold found that he could use Graham's as a j
platform from which to promote certain favorite writers
j
and their works. When Elizabeth Oakes Smith's volume, The J
Sinless Child and Other Poems, appeared in 1843 Griswold
mentioned it in his monthly column, "The Editor's Table."
i
83 ;
Oakes Smith was declared "an accomplished critic" who
belonged to "the first class of the writers of her sex,"
whose "forthcoming volume will, of course, be most
favorably received" {April 1843; Graham's XXII, 264). Two
months later a very complimentary review of The Sinless i
i
Child appeared to help insure the book's success.
Griswold was similarly complimentary of Lydia Maria
Child's new publication, Letters from New York and urged
publishers to bring out Child's letters in a volume (April j
1843; Graham's XXII. 264). !
Griswold seems to have had enough freedom at Graham1s
to include certain women writers to its pages without
specific permission from George Graham. The list of major ,
contributors that appeared on the January 1843 issue
reflected Griswold's preferences more than Graham's.
i
Fanny Osgood, Elizabeth Ellet, and Maria Brooks, under her
pen name Maria del Occidente, were listed. Brooks was
I
Griswold's favorite poetess, but it was difficult to get
I
her to write for the periodicals. Her poems tended to be j
i
long and elaborate, and were therefore unsuitable for the (
i
light and breezy Graham1s♦ Only one of her poems was j
i
printed in Graham's while Griswold was an editor. j
Elizabeth Ellet, on the other hand, Dublished quite often |
I
*n Graham1s. She had appeared in The Poets and Poetry of
America and Griswold thought her worthy of a space in the
main section of the book, rather than the appendix. She
submitted an unsolicited poem in August 1842 entitled, "To
a Belle who is not a Blue Belle," which was published in
the October issue (Ellet to Editor of Graham1s, Aug. 20,
1842, PHi).
Griswold also chose Lydia Sigourney as a principle
contributor despite his criticism of her in The Poets and
Poetry of America. Whatever his personal opinion of her
poetry she was one of the most popular poets in America
and it would look well to have her on the pages of
Graham1s. Sigourney had not contributed to Graham1s in
1842 after Griswold's appointment, probably because of her
mistrust of Griswold. When she received the letter from
Griswold requesting her contributions she was surprised.
Despite her feelings about Griswold, she was happy to send
her writing to his magazine. Graham1s was a widely-read
magazine, and Sigourney was pleased to keep her work
before the public.
Some of the principle contributors to Graham's were
clearly not Griswold's choice, however. Griswold admired,
but did not hire, Emma Embury. Ann Stephens was a
declared enemy of Griswold's. Before Graham hired
85
Griswold he had hired her to contribute to the magazine
and to solicit items from others. Stephens remained in
| her home in New York, and it is possible that Graham hired
her so that she would publicize the magazine there among
her wide circle of literary friends. Her personality was
such that a clash with Griswold was inevitable. Griswold
was attracted to women less powerful than himself; he
liked women who needed help in getting published or needed
his editorial counsel. Ann Stephens was a society woman
from New York, well-heeled and well-known in publishing
circles. She was tall and blonde, with a forceful
personality and a sharp tongue.
It is likely that Stephens was somewhat envious of
Griswold's having been hired as Graham's associate; after
all, she had been on the editorial staff before him. A*
any rate the two formed an almost instant dislike for each
other and by the end of 1842 Stephens described Griswold
to Lydia Sigourney with unbridled anger:
[H]e is a man constitutionally incapable of
speaking the truth, a sycophant in your company,
a serpent in the company of those who like to
hear you unjustly spoken of— a man incapable of
steady friendship or enmity, in short a moral
coward and a dangerous person to be connected
with. But he is a useful Editor and invaluable
to Mr. Graham from his industry, taste and above
all from his soft manner and cringing habits
which make him remarkably popular with a certain
class of writers. Whatever he has said of you
86
has been said fifty times of every writer in the
country, and if he has given an unfavorable
opinion one day be assured a favorable one was
given the next. His conduct toward myself was
utterly unprincipled." (Haight 122)
Griswold did not know that he had been vilified to
Sigourney in this way, but he knew of Stephens' antipathy
for him. In January 1843 Greeley had invited Stephens to
dinner, hoping to find out how "Friend Gris" fared in
Graham's employ. Greeley instigated a "sham-fight" with
Stephens and thus
learned from her not only that you were to
leave for Europe in March, but that Graham would
edit the Magazine himself after that time, but
she evidently anticipates having her finger very
prominently inserted in one corner of it.
I know you will have too much sense to say
anything to Graham about it. . . . After you
have gone, I will help Mr. Graham to see the
difference in his circulation between your
editing and his. Say nothing. (Bayless 68)
Griswold did not have sufficient sense to keep from
talking and mentioned the incident to Graham who carried
it back to Mrs. Stephens (Greeley to RWG, Nov. 13, 1843,
MB). Both Greeley and Griswold had to suffer Stephens'
enmity for that blunder.
Griswold was instrumental in obtaining the services
of several women writers while at Graham1s. He obtained
for Graham1s four sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett which were
included in the December 1842 issue. They had originally
87
been intended for Arcturus, another literary journal
edited by Griswold's friend, Cornelius Matthews, but the
journal had folded before the poems could be included and
Matthews sent the poems on to Griswold (Bayless 61).
Griswold praised them highly as being "unique in this age
of lady authors" (Dec. 1842; Graham's XXI, 343). Griswold
was also able to persuade Catherine Sedgwick, a leading
prose writer of the day, to leave a comfortable
arrangement with Godey1s and move to Graham's. Louis
Godey paid her $500 for every forty-eight pages of
material and Sedgwick expected and got the same
arrangement with Graham's (Charles Sedgwick to the Editor
of Graham's, May 6, 1843, MB).
Griswold became acquainted with some of the women
authors that he would later include in The Female Poets of
America. Mary Lockhart Lawson contributed frequent poems
during Griswold's tenure and Anna M. F. Annan contributed
i a number of short stories. Park Benjamin wrote to
Griswold on June 27, 1842 in order to advance the career
of Jane Lomax: "I promised also to write to you in behalf
of Miss Jane Lomax, whose papers you may have hitherto
noticed in the Southern Literary Messenger and who wishes
to write for Mr. Graham. If you hear from her, pray
'entreat' her kindly for [my] sake" (June 27, 1842, PHi).
88
Lomax' poems appeared in the March and October issues in
1843. Benjamin was also responsible for sending along
some poetry from Eliza Pratt "for which, I think, she asks
nothing" (June 27, 1842, PHi). A poem of Pratt's was
published in the October 1842 issue.
One other poetess caught Griswold's eye. Anna Cora
Mowatt was settled in New York, having recently returned
from a trip to Europe. Her husband having lost both his
health and his fortune, Mrs. Mowatt supported the two of
them by giving poetry readings and supplying Graham1s.
Godey1s, and The Democratic Review with her writing. She
was also an actress. Griswold was apparently charmed with
her, and Hoffman took the trouble to tease him about it
while Griswold was suffering a bout with his old enemy,
tuberculosis: "How's your health? Better I'm certain!
Mrs. Mowatt may dart her plumes into hearts but as to
transfixing lungs with her eyes in that way tis all
[gammon]" (Barnes 224). One of her poems appeared in
Graham's in the August 1842 issue.
Graham's Magazine showed the influence of The Poets
and Poetry of America and Gems from American Female Poets
during Griswold's tenure. Of the the twenty-seven women
writers whose work appeared in Graham's in any capacity
89
during that year and a half, thirteen of the women had had
their poems published in either The Poets and Poetry of
America or Gems. Eleven of those women had been published
i
in both. It became Griswold's habit to work off of the !
things he had published earlier, to use one project as the
basis for another.
Griswold also picked up a few new writers for future
works. Ann Stephens either impressed or intimidated
Griswold enough to be included later in The Female Poets
of America, though she wrote only short stories and
articles, no poems, for Graham's♦ Park Benjamin's j
suggestion of Jane Lomax for the pages of Graham's stayed
with Griswold and she also appeared in The Female Poets of
America as did Eliza Pratt whose poetry Park sent
unrecommended to Griswold. Rebecca Nichols and Margaret
Lockhart Lawson also appeared in the later anthology as a !
f i
| result of Griswold's association with Graham's. j
Graham1s Magazine published a large proportion of
writing by women, which is not surprising since women j
comprised a substantial part of its readership.
Griswold's experience at Graham1s, combined with the
editing of his two collections of poetry, formed the basis
for the editing of women's writing that he would do in
90
later years. Griswold left Graham1s in the fall of 1843;
the October 1843 issue contained the announcement of his
resignation. It is unclear exactly what prompted him to
leave. He had not liked some of the people on the
Graham1s staff, Charles J. Peterson and Mrs. Stephens most
particularly, and both of them were good friends of George
Graham's. It seems unlikely, however, that Graham had
asked him to leave on these grounds since he maintained
friendly relations with Graham for some time after leaving
his job. He remained connected with the magazine to the
extent that he sent contributors their way for several
years and also contributed to the magazine himself.
Once Griswold was free from Graham1s he took on
various editorial duties. He remained in Philadelphia and
edited The Quarterly Review of the American Protestant
Association, an anti-Catholic publication. He also
produced a series of "job" books not unlike the Gems from
American Female Poets which he had published in 1842.
These "job" books generally included a fairly large
selection of poetry by American women and again showed
Griswold's reliance on The Poets and Poetry of America and
Gems from American Female Poets.
91
For example, in 1843 Griswold compiled a book
entitled Readings in American Poetry. It was a small
collection of poetry for use in schools so that American
schoolchildren might have the same exposure to American
poets as they had to European poets. The eight women
poets that Griswold included had all appeared in The Poets
and Poetry of America or Gems from American Female Poets
and all of their poems that were included came from these
sources. A series of gift books followed in 1844 and 1845
that depended on these early anthologies as well. Their
titles give adequate description of their content: The
Cypress Wreath. The Poetry of Love, The Poetry of Flowers,
The Poetry of the Sentiments, The Poetry of the Passions.
Nearly all of the American women poets that appeared in
these books had had their work published in Griswold's
earlier anthologies or in Graham1s Magazine during his
tenure there. Many of the individual poems had been
published first in these places.
During this period Griswold also edited the poetry of
several English poetesses, probably, as Joy Bayless,
Griswold's biographer suggests, because he needed the
money and "not because he had any genuine interest in
their writings" (Bayless 86). He had become acquainted
with the market for women's literature, and he realized
that such books could sell. In 1843 he edited the poems
of Eliza Cook under the title Melaia, and Other Poems; in
1845 The Poems of Felicia Hemans with a Essay on Her
Genius by H. T. Tuckerman appeared. Griswold's edition of
The Poems of the Hon. Mrs. Norton was published in 1846.
These books sold well and they were published under
various titles by several different companies, even after
Griswold's death.
In 1847 Griswold published another substantial
anthology, The Prose Writers of America. It was based on
his earlier Poets and Poetry of America and contained the
writing of seventy-two authors. Only five of those
authors were women and not one of them was especially
well-recommended in the book. Griswold praised some of
them, but mixed with that praise there was always a sense
of their limitations. Catherine Sedgwick's biographical
notice is a typical example:
[Sedgwick] writes with a higher object than
merely to amuse. Animated by a cheerful
philosophy, and anxious to pour its sunshine
into every place where there is lurking care or
suffering, she selects for illustration the
scenes of everyday experience, paints them with
exact fidelity, and seeks to diffuse over the
mind a delicious serenity, and in the heart kind
feelings and sympathies, and wise ambition, and
steady hope. A truly American spirit pervades
her works. (PW 357)
93
This lukewarm praise characterizes the notices of
others besides Sedgwick, including Lydia Child, Eliza
Leslie, and Caroline Kirkland. Margaret Puller was openly
attacked. Horace Greeley had been determined that
Griswold should read and admire Fuller's work. While
Griswold was working on The Prose Writers of America
Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century was published.
In January 1945 Greeley told Griswold her book was "going
to sell1 1 (Passages 163); in February he declared that the
book would "make its mark. It is not elegantly written,
but every line talks" (Passages 166). When Fuller
published a second book entitled Papers on Literature and
Art in 1846 Greeley urged Griswold to see it "before you
write about her" (Passages 204). He went on to point out
the excellencies of the work, but Greeley's opinion went
unheeded. Griswold found Margaret Fuller intolerable and
could not be moved from this position.
Griswold let loose his scorn in the biographical
notice of her. While he conceded Woman in the Nineteenth
Century was "one of the most brilliant of the many books
on the intellectual and social position of woman that has
been published," he complained that it
is difficult . . . to understand what is
its real import, further than to the extent that
the author is ill satisfied that there should be
difference in the rank and opportunity of the
sexes. That there should be some difference in
their sphere she seems not unwilling to allow.
Like the rest of that diverting company of women
who have contemplated a nullification of certain
of the statutes of nature, she would but have
choice of places and vocations. (PW 537)
Fuller had attacked Schoolcraft's work on the Indians
and Griswold characterized her remarks as "superficial"
and "incautious," and reprinted some of what Fuller had
said, calling it "ridiculous" (PW 537). Schoolcraft was a j
friend of Griswold's, and Fuller's blunt criticism angered
him. He also disliked her for being insufficiently
supportive of her national literature. He declared:
Miss Fuller rarely attempts particular or
analytical criticism, but commends or censures j
every thing with about an equal degree of
earnestness. She seems to think that books, 1
like brown stout, are improved by the motion of j
a ship, and therefore generally eulogizes those j
which have been imported, and is very severe j
upon those of home production, excepting a few
by personal friends, of the reading of some of
which she enjoys a monopoly. (PW 538)
Overall Miss Fuller was judged to have i
remarkable quickness but not much subtlety !
of apprehension; general, but not solid j
acquirements; and an astonishing facility in the ;
use of her intellectual furniture, which has j
secured her the reputation of being one of the |
best talkers of the present age. (PW 538) j
|
Griswold reacted so strongly against Fuller for a
i
number of reasons. She was the antithesis of his usual
95
female protegee. She was strong-minded and "unfeminine."
She was socially awkward and not especially pretty. She
was a radical feminist. Griswold could barely tolerate
feminism on the lips of his pretty and coquettish friend,
Elizabeth Oakes Smith. It was impossible to listen to it
from Margaret Fuller.
Even before The Prose Writers of America was actually
"out," Griswold feared that the book would not be kindly
received. He wrote to Fields in December 1846 saying,
I dread its appearance. "Young America"
will be rabid; and what will be worse, you and
my kind friends will be disappointed. I have•
worked upon it pretty steadily for nineteen
months, but it is incomplete, and poor indeed in
so many ways, that I grow sick with the fear
that it will be read by those who know how such
a book should be made (Dec. 29, 1846, CSmH).
Griswold's personal opinions and prejudices were much more
apparent here than in The Poets and Poetry of America. He
had praised his friend, Charles Fenno Hoffman, far beyond
i his desserts and snubbed or left out personal enemies.
Writers and critics alike attacked Griswold when it was
published.
The short shrift given to women writers created hard
feelings even among Griswold's friends. Griswold told
Fields his troubles. "Greeley," he said "is angry at what
96
I offer under the name of Margaret [Puller], which is very
badly written though all true." As to the women
themselves,
there is Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Ann
S. Stephens, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs.
Ellet,— YeGods! is there nought to settle my
stomach after the writing of all these
names!— they all have warm admirers, and could
bring witnesses into court, every one of them,
to prove that they are equal to De Staei .
and they are believed. . . . thus talking
of women who make books, we have had but one in
America who merited her reputation— Maria
Brooks. Mrs. Smith has talent for writing, and
quick apprehension — but the literature of
women, everywhere, is for the most part,
sauzle— an expressive word, from the feminine
vocabulary. (March 7, 1847, CSmH)
Griswold's comments on the inflated reputation of
women writers in America were particularly significant
since he had been the prime mover in establishing some of
those reputations. In the next two years he would publish
a book that more than any work preceding it would
establish the reputations of many female poets. Griswold
was already considered something of an authority on
women. In late 1847 or early 1848 Louis Godey asked
Griswold to write an article on American women serving as
missionaries overseas which was published in Godey"s under
the title "The Heroism of the Knights Errant and of the
Female Missionaries of America" in the August 1848 issue.
97
During the summer of 1848 Griswold lectured in Providence
on women writers (Bayless 148).
Yet Griswold lacked any real belief that women's
writing could be considered in the same category as that
of men. His considerable experience with their writing
that he had acquired by 1848 had convinced him that their
writing would sell, but not that it could ever compete
intellectually with writing by men.
This perspective had tremendous consequences for the
book that Griswold would undertake next.
98
Chapter 3
Choosing the Poets
Griswold's relationships with women were very much
affected by the death of his first wife and his
fluctuating marital status after that time. He had
idolized his first wife Caroline; he had called her his
"good angel," the first "to lead me from a cheerless,
lonely life, to society" (RWG to Fields, Nov. 10, 1842,
CSmH). In November 1842, while Griswold was editing
Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia she had given birth to a
son, their third child. Griswold had rushed to New York
and spent a few days with his family. He returned to
Philadelphia on November 6, and three days later received
word that his wife and newborn son were dead. Griswold
became the grieving widower with a vengeance.
The funeral was held on November 11, and Caroline was
buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. As the coffin
was placed in the tomb Griswold fell into fits of weeping
and could not be removed from the coffin. He accepted no
99
consolation and eventually he was left alone at the
cemetery for several hours. Finally Caroline's uncle.
Captain Samuel Waring, was sent to bring him home. Waring
had been a sea captain in his younger days, and when he
reached the tomb he used his most commanding tones with
the distraught husband, "In Heaven's name, Rufus, have
done with this nonsense and come along home with me."
i
Rufus went (Bayless 65). j
Griswold continued to show his grief publicly,
however. He wrote a poem entitled "Five Days" dated
Midnight, Nov. 11, 1842 which appeared in The New-York
Tribune. It was an embarrassingly emotional account of
I
his happy marriage, and though the Tribune was willing to :
print it they did so without Griswold's name. The name of !
the author, however, was plain to anyone in the literary
set who saw the poem. Griswold told his troubles to j
anyone who would listen, and more than one of his old
enemies felt a softening toward him to see him in such j
agony.
His grief reached a climax when, forty days after
Caroline's funeral he committed an act of near insanity.
He wrote of it later in a letter to Richard Henry Dana:
I could not think that my dear wife was
dead. I dreamed night after night of our j
I
100
reunion. In a fit of madness I went to New
York. The vault where she is sleeping is nine
miles from the city. I went to it: the sexton
unclosed it: and I went down alone into that
silent chamber. I kneeled by her side and
prayed, and then, with my own hand, unfastened
the coffin lid, turned aside the drapery that
hid her face, and saw the terrible changes made
by Death and Time. I kissed for the last time
her cold black forehead— I cut off locks of her
beautiful hair, damp with the death dews, and
sunk down in senseless agony beside the ruin of
all that was dearest in the world. In the
evening, a friend from the city, who had learned
where I was gone, found me there, my face still
resting on her own, and my body as lifeless and
cold as that before me. (Qtd. in Bayless 66)
This horrible experience seems to have turned the
tide. Griswold was sorrowful, but not hysterical after
this. He returned to Philadelphia and threw himself into
his work. He thought of escaping to Europe, but did not
actually go. In the end his work and his friendships seem j
i
i
I
to have pulled him through. His remaining two children j
i
i
went to live with Caroline's relatives and Griswold became
an eligible widower, unencumbered by wife or children.
Once the worst of the grief was over Griswold began to
think of getting married again. It seemed the only way to
I
recapture his old way of life. He frequently visited his [
children in New York, where they had lived at least part
of the year following Caroline's death with Captain
Waring, the man who had brought Griswold home from the
funeral. Waring had a pretty, young daughter, Elizabeth,
101 !
who attracted Griswold. He asked her to marry him about a
year after Caroline's death. He was refused (Bayless
64-67).
Griswold soon found, however, that not all women were
so hardhearted. Though he left Graham's employ in the
fall of 1843, he remained in Philadephia and his social
position combined with the society available to him there
guaranteed him many invitations and many opportunities to
change his marital status. Charles Fenno Hoffman
particularly liked to twit Griswold over his
susceptibility to likely females and he wrote to his
friend in January 1844:
How go the Sentimentalities— How the women
have affected yr condition it irks me to know
They handle all of us hardly enough but Gad when
they get hold of a chap of yr poetic temperament
they use him up completely— at least for a
while. (Barnes 233)
Whenever Hoffman did not hear from Griswold he
assumed that the reason was female. "Are you
ill?— Bewomanized?" he wrote in April (Barnes 238-39).
In June he groused, "For George I'm afraid some woman has
got hold of you again" (Barnes 241-42).
Griswold did seem "bewomanized." His attraction to
an unnamed widow added fuel to Hoffman's teasing; he was
102
the toast of the boarding house where he stayed on
Chestnut Street. But in the summer of 1844 he met a woman
who seemed to him superior to the rest. Charlotte Myers,
a wealthy Jewess from Charleston, had come to Philadelphia
with her aunt and unmarried sister to escape the heat of a
Southern summer. The aunt, Mrs. Hesse, saw the
possibilities and a campaign to snare the well-known i
editor for her niece began. The three women met often j
with Griswold and his friend Henry Tuckerman who was also
in Philadelphia for the summer. Charlotte was much older
than Griswold, fifty-five to his twenty-nine; she was also
wealthier. It was very tempting for him to think of the
luxurious home in the warm Southern climate he would
possess if he should marry her. Despite Griswold's
successes as an editor, he had never had much in the way j
of ready cash, and it was easy to daydream of the books he J
might possess and the trips that could be embarked on if j
I
he should marry a woman of wealth. j
The three women went back to Charleston for the
winter and Griswold had time to ponder his attraction to
I
this woman. He decided to marry her and during the next 1
j
summer they became engaged. Charlotte returned to
Charleston in the fall of 1845 and news of the engagement
was spread among her friends. Left to himself in
I
I
]
103 ;
Philadelphia Griswold began to have doubts. Charlotte's
background was so dissimilar to his own. She was Jewish
and he was a Protestant minister who edited a Protestant
quarterly. Charlotte had never been married and might
find the adjustment difficult. There might be
difficulties because of their age difference. Griswold
finally decided to break off the engagement.
It is easier, however, to begin an engagement than to
break one off. Charlotte had already announced their
plans to her friends and refused to give Griswold up. She
and her family considered Griswold's offer of marriage
binding and expected him to live up to his obligations.
He was summoned to Boston to meet with the Myers family.
Their arguments could not sway him and he returned to New
York, followed by the aunt and the sisters. The debate
continued over breakfast on the morning of August 20,
1845. Worn down by their determination Griswold left the
decision to them. He said to them: "I will leave you for
i
an hour: if at the end of that time you still claim a
fulfillment of the engagement, you shall be satisfied
immediately" (Bayless 107). It was the most foolish
mistake Griswold would ever make. August 20 became his
wedding day.
104
Angered at the way Charlotte had forced him to marry
her, Griswold refused to make his marriage public. He
soon found, however, that he had been cheated in a much
more serious way. Through some physical deformity,
Charlotte was prevented from being a wife. Griswold was
at the end of his rope. He was certain that the family
had known of her condition. He had been most cruelly
I
tricked. And yet he felt it impossible to tell the world
the facts about the enormity that had been committed
against him. He consulted a lawyer about the possibility
of a divorce. The lawyer encouraged him to go to
Charleston where Griswold could obtain a document
relinquishing his rights to Charlotte's property, as a
prelude to divorce. The Myers family also wanted him in
Charleston so that at least the semblance of a marriage
could be maintained.
Griswold spent five months in Charleston trying to
work out his problem. He brought with him his two little
girls, the youngest of which, Caroline, became very
attached to her "Aunt Charlotte." Griswold made use of
the time he spent in Charleston. His anthologies and the
editing of Graham1s Magazine had made him a well-known
figure and he received invitations all over town. During
this period he became acquainted with a number of Southern
105
writers and poets, William Gilmore Simms, Elizabeth Ellet,
Caroline Gilman, and Mary E. Lee among them. But he saw
no honorable way out of the alliance with Charlotte. If
anything, the relationship had grown more complicated by
his moving to Charleston. Charlotte and Caroline could
not bear to be separated from each other; Griswold was
more widely known to be Charlotte's husband. He was
embarrassed by the alliance, and making the details of his
entrapment known would cause him much more embarrassment.
In the end Griswold agreed to a separation rather
than a divorce. He received a thousand dollars to give up
any claim to Charlotte's fortune and his younger daughter
had three thousand dollars settled upon her. Caroline was
to remain with Charlotte and Griswold would keep silent on
the cause of the separation. It was not a very conclusive
solution, and Griswold would live to regret his pact of
silence. But it took care of matters for the moment and
in the early summer of 1846 he left Charleston to return
to work in Philadelphia (Bayless 104-10).
He worked feverishly as a way of forgetting his
troubles. His major occupation was The Prose Writers of
America and while he was engaged in that work he had
little time or inclination for socializing. In February
106
of 1847, however, he received an offer that would both
ease his financial worries and give him greater
opportunity for a social life. He was to edit for Harper
and Brothers a six-volume biographical dictionary which
would require a move to New York City. New York was
Griswold's spiritual home; it was where most of his
friends were and where his older daughter, Emily, lived
with the Waring family. Griswold accepted the offer
joyfully and made the move in June 1847.
Griswold did not really consider his alliance with
Charlotte to be a marriage, "any more than there would
have been had the ceremony taken place between parties of
the same sex, or where the sex of one was doubtful or
ambiguous" (qtd. in Bayless 108). Thus when he arrived in
New York City he lived much as he had in Philadelphia
before his marriage to Charlotte. He was not free to
marry again, but he felt quite free to engage in close
relationships with a variety of attractive women. In some
ways his ties to Charlotte made Griswold's social life
easier. As a widower he had been restricted to
flirtations with widows and unmarried women. As a man who
was technically married, he could safely maintain close
friendships even with married women.
107
Since Griswold's departure from New York in 1842 some
things had changed in the New York literary community.
\
i
J
More and more writers were women and they had begun to ]
wield a certain amount of influence, mostly by
entertaining and developing friendships with editors,
publishers, and their male colleagues. Several women
I
poets were particularly well-known for their "literary
evenings," when writers and publishers would gather to
socialize, plan literary projects, and gossip. Ann
Lynch's parties were perhaps the best attended of these.
♦
Miss Lynch was a bluestocking and a poet who had become an |
important New York hostess since her move to the city in
1845. Late in his life Richard Henry Stoddard remembered j
I
back to the parties at Miss Lynch's "when, a timid young I
I
person of twenty-four, I was introduced into her salon, I
either by Dr. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, or by Mr. Bayard ;
i
Taylor." Stoddard remembered Lynch's guests:
Seba Smith and Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Mrs.
Caroline Kirkland, Miss Elizabeth Bogart, Fanny i
Osgood, Dr. Francis, Ann Stephens, Miss Sedwick, !
Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Embury, Dr. Thomas Ward (a |
poet who signed his work "Flaccus"), William j
Cullen Bryant and Halleck and the "bard who
entreated the woodman to spare the tree."
(Passages 217)
Upon Rufus Griswold's arrival in New York he became a
regular visitor at Miss Lynch's and was urged by his
hostess to bring along any interesting writers that should
cross his path (Lynch to RWG, July 13, n.y. , MB).
Emma Embury was another of the New York hostesses.
The daughter of an eminent New York physician and the wife
of a banker, she had both a lovely home in Brooklyn and
ample means with which to entertain. She published poems,
tales, and essays in a number of periodicals and was
highly sought after as a contributor. Griswold was
well-acquainted with her from the days when he was an
editor at Graham's and she was a regular contributor.
The fortunes of Elizabeth Oakes Smith had much
improved since Griswold had left New York in 1843. She
was a frequent contributor to Graham1s, Godey1s. and The
Ladies1 Companion and had published three volumes of
poetry since 1843. Her poems had appeared in numerous
gift books and she was beginning to be known as a lecturer
on feminist issues. She had made her way into New York
literary society and was another popular hostess.
Griswold was invited regularly to her home. They were
still good friends from the days at Graham * s; she felt
grateful for his help and also genuinely liked him. In
her autobiography she remembered how Griswold behaved
socially during these years:
Mr. Griswold was in the habit of going
about with bits of criticism in his pocket, and
scraps of poetry which he had picked up; and
these he would read and comment upon. He had
the laugh of a child, and was strangely unable
to see the world as an arena for forms,
ceremonies and proprieties; hence his
freakishness and mistakes and errors had always
something incomplete and childish about them.
You never coupled him with any body
else— you never much cared to listen to his
conversation disconnected with literature, and
yet he talked well and with great animation,
most especially when Napoleon the Great was the
subject in hand, or J. Fenimore Cooper, for whom
he had a devoted personal attachment, and a
literary mania in regard to his genius. (May
1867; Beadle's Monthly III, 440)
Between the old literary connections that Griswold
had retained in New York and the new ones he was
continually forming at these parties, Griswold's social i
i
life improved tremendously in the summer of 1847.
Increasingly he found himself in the company of women, and
particularly literary women. These women maintained a
complex system of friendships and literary alliances that
Griswold found himself drawn into as he established
himself in New York. The literary woman was becoming part
of the literary machinery, and Griswold's anthology of
women's poetry would do much to concretize the
relationships he found in New York in 1847, as well as
create new relationships between women writers. Thus it
is important to look back at the specific relationships
between individual women writers as Griswold found them.
110
Several women formed the backbone of literary
relationships among New York women— Ann Lynch, Emma
Embury, Fanny Osgood, and Sarah Helen Whitman. Lynch and
Embury were important because their parties provided the
social contacts necessary for getting published. An
invitation to their parties was also a measure of success
in itself. Lynch, particularly, was adept at introducing
the right people to each other and she herself had perhaps
the widest range of literary friends in New York.
Fanny Osgood was one of the most universally praised
women in the New York literary circuit. She had a
sweetness of manner and a charm that was irresistible.
Richard Henry Stoddard wrote of her years later as a
"paragon." She was "loved of all men who knew her" and
"hated by no woman who ever felt the charm of her
presence" (Passages 216). She was estranged from her
husband in 1844 and during the time that they were
separated she was more emotionally dependent on her
friends than ever. Her separation did not seem to weigh
on her very heavily. She was a regular at Ann Lynch's
parties and had a much-publicized relationship with Poe.
Sarah Helen Whitman was not a New Yorker, but her
social ties to the New York literary group were as strong
111
as if she had been. She was a very close friend of Ann
Lynch and she sometimes came down from her home in
Providence for Miss Lynch's parties. When she could not
be present Lynch kept her informed of local gossip and J
kept her name well-known in the literary circle. She was
also friends with Fanny Osgood, Mary Hewitt, and Anna Cora
Mowatt in New York.
There were also in New York at this time a few
"rising stars," poets who were beginning to have their
I
work published, but who as yet had not had the same kind
of social acceptance that the women already mentioned
had. Elizabeth Oakes Smith was one of these. By 1847 she i
was making an adequate living and had some literary
connections in New York, but did not have the number or
range of social connections that Lynch or Whitman did.
She was lively and intelligent, but there was sometimes a
bite to her wit that did not always accord with the
I sweetness of the ideal feminine stereotype. Sarah Helen
i
Whitman, one of Oakes Smith's closest friends, described
her as "a little bit wicked sometimes" (Whitman to Julia
Deane Freeman, [Sept. 25, 1857], RPB-JH). On some
occasions Oakes Smith also found the code of etiquette in
New York both mysterious and confining. When Elizabeth
Ellet's play went into rehearsal Oakes Smith wrote to a
112
friend for advice, asking:
have you heard anything about it? Must we
ail go to applaud? I am ready to do all that is
required of me on such occasions, when I know
what it is. If you become enlightened in any
such path, in which it is proper I should walk,
I pray you let me know, for I am living so
amongst the 'outside barbarians,' that I am
quite benighted. (Smith to "Kate Carol," n.d.,
PHi)
Oakes Smith's sharp tongue was at odds with the
prevailing code of decorum. The nineteenth-century woman
tended to avoid confrontation and made her dislikes known
only through indirection. Women made friends mostly with
women, sometimes in close, very intense dyads, and often
in extensive networks of social attachment. Women were
emotionally dependent on each other and backbiting was
kept to a minimum. Carol_Smith-Rosenburg has studied the
role of female relationships in the nineteenth century and
describes this "female world" as one "in which hostility
and criticism of other women were discouraged, and thus a
milieu in which women could develop a sense of inner
security and self-esteem" (Love and Ritual 14). It was
more difficult for the literary woman to abstain from
criticism. She was, after all, competing mostly with
other women for the public's attention. Yet, the
behavioral strictures of society kept the carping to a
113
minimum, and only between the most intimate friends were
unpleasant things said about other women writers.
Sara Jane Lippincott, known under the pen name of
"Grace Greenwood," was another new author that was gaining
in popularity. She had first gained importance by
publishing in N. P. Willis's New Mirror and later in the
Home Journal. She wrote poetry and orose, and was both |
i
prolific and very popular. She worked as a journalist and
correspondent and she argued for reform in both the social
and the political arena. Her aggressiveness, however,
sometimes made her unpopular with New York literary women,
i
though she could be as gushingly sweet as any of them. |
She had a knack for pushing herself forward, which did not
endear her to her colleagues. On the other hand, she knew
which connections to make. She was a friend and !
6
correspondent of Ann Lynch's, and Fanny Osgood wrote to
"Grace" praising her poem "Voices from the Old World"
published in the Home Journal (NNBa, n.d.).
One of the popular new authors in the 1840's was Anna
i 1
Cora Mowatt. Mowatt had established herself in New York
in the late 1930's and was forced to support an ailing
6. See Lippincott's letters, Dec. 19, 1848, PSt; Dec. 11,
1848, RPB-JH.
husband and three adopted children. She did so by writing
plays, poetry, articles of all sorts, and, eventually, by
acting. One of her plays, Fashion, had remarkable
success, running for three weeks in New York in 1945. The
play continued to be popular in both Europe and America.
Because Mowatt focused more of her attention on the
theater than on poetry or fiction she was not as much a
part of the New York women's literary circle. But she was
charming and well-liked; Griswold had entertained
something of a crush on her even while the sainted
Caroline had been alive (Barnes 224).
Margaret Fuller was a more transitory member of the
I
New York literati. She lived in New York City from I
I
December 1844 to August 1846 when she left for Europe.
i
Her ability was well recognized, but she never fitted the
mold of the New York literary woman. Perhaps as a
reaction to the aggressive nature of the writing
profession, the New York literary woman compensated by ]
emphasizing her domesticity, her social ability, and even i
her looks. The vigorous reformer or the strong-minded
intellectual generally operated on the outskirts of the
literary clique in New York. While Fuller was j
well-accepted in New England, her lack of social skills
and her impatience with literary mediocrity made her a
115
peripheral figure in New York. Sarah Helen Whitman
complained of her "conscious aloofness" ([March 1857],
i
RPB-JH) and Elizabeth Oakes Smith remembered that Fuller i
had criticized a certain pastor "as she did most of the
people around her" (Autobiography 80).
One of Fuller's closest friends in New York was Lydia
Maria Child, a prose writer and erstwhile poet. Lydia J
Maria Child was a native of Massachusetts, but she resided
in New York in the late 1840's. Though she might have
assumed a prominent place among the literary women due to
her mature years and her immense popularity as a fiction j
writer, she chose to live a quiet life. When Ann Lynch i
invited her to one of the literary evenings, Child turned |
her down kindly, but firmly: "If I ever went anywhere, I |
certainly should have come. But for ten years past, I |
have made no visits, and formed no new acquaintance. I am
considered a very odd woman; but my only oddity consists
I in an unaffected love of seclusion" (n.d., NHi). Child
was not as reclusive as this seems. She did have time for |
visits from Margaret Fuller and some of the comments in ,
I
4
her letters indicate that she was unimpressed with the
"pretty stories" being turned out by her female colleagues
(Child to RWG, May 1, 1843, on microfiche, MCR). In a j
letter to a friend, Child said of the women who published !
in the newspapers, "They seem to flutter together, like a
sea of hens, terribly frightened lest you and I, and other
'strong-minded' hawks should pounce down upon 'em and
carry them off from their chickies" (Child to "Miss May,"
Feb. 3, n.d., NHi).
One of the additions to New York society in the
mid-1840's was Elizabeth Ellet, who had published in
several of the New York periodicals even before she moved
there. Ellet was one of the most intelligent and most
vigorous of the women writers, but she was viewed with
some suspicion by most of the literary community because
she had a knack for making trouble. Ellet was largely
responsible for Poe's falling out of favor with most of
the New York literary women in the summer of 1845. Her
relentless attacks on Griswold made his last years
miserable. Yet Ellet could be wonderfully charming, and
her intellect was undeniable. She wrote poetry, plays,
articles, and histories. Social history was her forte,
and her books were published to the turn of the century.
But the New York literary women dealt with her
cautiously.
Not all New York literary women were writers. Two of
them were primarily known as editors and it is interesting
117
to notice how women writers related to women editors.
Sarah Josepha Hale edited Godev1s Lady1s Book out of
Philadelphia, but maintained close contacts with her
primary writers who mostly lived in New York. Hale
occupied an important social position both because of her
profession and because of her strong personality, but the
New York women did not like her much. She did not receive
the same kind of "chummy" letters that Fanny Osgood or
Anne Lynch often got, and, in fact, was quite openly !
criticized. For example, Hale considered herself a friend
of Sarah Helen Whitman and as early as 1828 was trying to
get Whitman to contribute poems to her newly published
Ladies' Magazine (Hale to John W. Whitman, May 21, 1828, !
I
RPB-JH). Yet Whitman disliked Hale, avoided her repeated
requests for poetry, and felt quite free to express her
dislike to Fanny Osgood. When Osgood addressed Whitman in
1
I
a letter as Sarah J_j_ Whitman, Sarah replied, "remember my
! name is Sarah Helen Whitman— & not Sarah J. I am afraid
!
you have somehow or other confounded me with Mrs. Sarah J. j
Hale. If so I shall never forgive you— " (Whitman to !
I
Osgood, [1848], PHi). I
i
i
I
' |
Ann Stephens, on the other hand, was well-accepted by j
I
the New York literary women. She frequently attended Ann 1
Lynch's parties, and she maintained close friendships with
several women writers in New York. In the 1850's she
published the work of many of her female colleagues in her
own periodical, Mrs. Stephen's Illustrated New Monthly,
and later as editor of Peterson1s Magazine. Stephens
believed that women's writing should be shielded from
negative criticism. In July 1843 she wrote to George
Graham after a harsh review of Katharine Ware's Poems had
appeared in Graham's:
I am grieved to see the review of Mrs. Ware
and I am sure your own generous heart never
prompted the publication. She is a woman, and
to such, a poetical temperament brings its own
curse without harsh criticism. The man who
wrote that review should remember that a woman
cannot strike back without unsexing herself.
(Passages 112)
Griswold's extensive association with these women was
probably one reason that he began in the summer of 1848 to
compile an anthology of poetry by American women. Since
the publication of The Poets and Poetry of America he had
considered the possibility of a women's anthology, and he
stated in the preface to The Female Poets of America that
he had been delayed in producing the book by his
"interrupted health" (FP 6). Though Griswold's health was
frequently a problem, it seems unlikely that this was the
main reason for the delay. During the mid-40's Griswold
had produced numerous compilations and anthologies without
119
particular concern for his health. It is more likely that
Griswold had simply not gotten around to this particular
project. In the summer of 1848, surrounded as he was by
women who wished to be included in such a book, the
project began to take on new meaning for him.
He was thinking about the project again in 1847 when
i
he received a letter from Charles Fenno Hoffman with
suggestions for the work. Griswold was bringing out
another edition of The Poets and Poetry of America and
Hoffman told him that
As a matter of policy as well as
arrangement I would have omitted the female
writers altogether and promised them "in another
volume if this met with encouragement"— Such a
volume, with plates of the prettiest, would have
sold even better than "the poets." (Barnes 276)
This is what Griswold eventually did. The 1849 edition of
The Poets and Poets of America contained no work by women
because they had their own volume, The Female Poets of
America.
Griswold had considered the idea for an anthology of
female poets to be his own ever since the publication of
The Poets and Poetry of America. But he might not have
actually undertaken it except for the competition provided
by two other literary people, Thomas Buchanan Read and
120
Caroline May, who began work on identical projects early
in 1848. Read was a painter and poet as well as a friend
of Griswold. Griswold had helped him plump his new book
of poetry, by gathering friendly reviews in Philadelphia
in December 1846 (Read to RWG, Dec. 21, 1846, MB). May
was a newcomer. She was a little-known poet living in New
York but was not a part of the New York literary circle.
Fanny Osgood knew her and called her "a friend" (Osgood to
|
S. H. Whitman, March 26, 1848, RPB-JH), but Anne Lynch had j
not heard of her. Lynch referred to her as being "unknown
to fame & me." In New York literary society the two
amounted to about the same thing.
t
I
Griswold knew of his competition in March. By that
time both Read and May were busily collecting poems and
|
biographical materials and as Griswold began to contact
poets he often found that someone had been there ahead of
him. When he wrote to Rebecca S. Nichols, a Cincinnati
Ipoet, for information he received word of Read's volume:
"Are you aware, that T. B. Read of Philadelphia is engaged 1
I
upon a work precisely similar to the one you contemplate
publishing? E. H. Butler & Co. are his publishers" (Mary
B. Williams for Nichols to RWG, March 27, n.y., MB). j
121
Griswold hated competition. He felt that the topic
belonged to him and that he was being cheated out of his
property. Read and May were several months ahead of him
in their collecting of materials; he was tied down to work
on the biographical dictionary and would have to juggle
both projects (RWG to Fields, [July 20] [1848], CSmH).
Griswold would have to work at breakneck speed to compete
with the other volumes. Read and May would probably
finish in time for the Christmas trade. He must finish by
December to avoid the embarrassment of an 1849 publishing
date.
In the May issue of the Southern Literary Messenger
Griswold's book was announced under the title The Female
Poets of America and Europe (May 1848; XIV, 336). It is
difficult to know whether the editors of the Southern
Literary Messenger had simply mistaken the title or
i
jwhether Griswold had at one time actually considered
including European poets in his volume. This announcement
gives evidence to the hurry-up job Griswold felt he must
perform. It was necessary for the notice to appear as
soon as possible in the Southern Literary Messenger even
before the scope of the book had really been settled. The
claim that the book would appear "shortly" would make it
122
appear that Griswold's volume was at about the same stage
as the volumes by Read and May, and, therefore, neither
Read and May could be considered the originators of the
idea.
In fact, Griswold had not done much work on The
Female Poets by May; most of the book was planned and
executed later in the summer. Griswold wrote to Fields in
mid-July to tell him of his progress and to characterize
the work for him. He told Fields that he expected it to
an interesting book, in the style, though
not quite of the thickness, of The Prose
Writers. The biographical and critical notices
will be comparatively long, particularly those
of the earlier writers, and of Mrs. Oakes Smith,
Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Whitman, &c.
Respecting many lessons, I am in doubt. I am
anxious to do justice to all who have written
anything which entitles them to a place in such
a collection, but cannot play the historian and
critic to all the Omes and other Matildas who
have written verses. Pray you, give me counsel
and assistance. (RWG to Fields, [July 20]
[1848], CSmH)
After Griswold's death his son, W. M. Griswold,
edited a selection his father's correspondence and
transcribed this letter as reading "Omes and Matildas."
Omes was a fairly common first name for women during this
period. The letter could, however, also be read as "Ornes
and Matildas." One of the women that Griswold seems to
123
have deliberately left out of The Female Poets of America
was Caroline Orne, a Cambridge poet and a friend of James
Russell Lowell's. She had published two volumes of poetry
before The Female Poets of America was published, Sweet
Auburn and Mt. Auburn, but was not included in Griswold's
anthology, nor, for that matter, in Read's or May's.
t
Griswold included in his letter a list of names he
was thinking of including in the volume. He also asked
Fields' advice on several other poets whom he had not
included in the first list, indicating that he would
probably be adding names to the list.
Can you tell me anything of one Eleanor
Allen, who wrote The Siege of Agrigentum,
published by Little & Brown, in 1841? Would you
put in Ch. Cushman, Mrs. Mowatt, Harriet[te]
Fanning Read, Ann S. Stephens, Jane T. (Lomax)
Worthington, and some of the minors in my list?
Let me have your critical, not your personal,
opinions. ([July 20] [1848], CSmH)
Fields responded to Griswold's plan overall: "I heartily
i
approve yr. Female Poet plan. Yr names are good, all of
them. Touching the doubtful ones I shd I think retain
iMrs. Mowatt and Jane Lomax. Of E. Allen I know nothing.
She is a woman of stamina I judge from her 'Seige'"
(Fields to RWG, Aug. IS, 1848, MB). This preliminary list
contained the names of forty-nine poets, forty-seven of
whom were included in the published work. From this
124
beginning Griswold added names throughout the summer, by
looking over the literary journals, researching volumes of
published poetry, and by listening to suggestions from his
friends.
Griswold's final list which was sent to the
publishers, Carey and Hart, of Philadelphia in late
November added forty-six names to this original list and
dropped two names from it, making a total of ninety-four
poets Included. Griswold believed in making his
anthologies as comprehensive as possible, even when he was
pressed for time. He once made fun of Charles Frederick
Briggs, who was "acquainted with one certain poet named
Lowell, and one certain painter named Page— no more" (RWG
to Fields, April 6 [1850], CSmH). Such exclusivity was
abhorent to Griswold. In his anthology there must appear
to be a full measure of American poets, more than could
possibly fit in a volume. As a result he included in The
Female Poets of America poets who had "written anything
which entitles them to a place in such a collection" (RWG
to Fields, [July 20] [1848], CSmH).
As Griswold composed his preliminary list of names to
be included in the volume he was aided by two
circumstances that helped him save time. First, he had
125
already had extensive experience in anthologizing women's
poetry, both in The Poets and Poetry of America and in
Gems from American Female Poets. Of the fifty names on
the preliminary list twenty-six had appeared in Gems from
American Female Poets; twenty-two of the twenty-six had
also appeared in The Poets and Poetry of America. One
poet, Emma Embury, had been included in The Poets and
( — — -
t
Poetry of America but not Gems. Surprisingly, Griswold
did not rely much on earlier general anthologies of poetry
for names to be included, as he had earlier done for his
own Poets and Poetry of America and Gems from American
Female Poets. The poets in his list that had not appeared
in Poets and Poetry or Gems tended to come from sources
other than general anthologies.
A second factor that made Griswold's work easier was
that he was presently living in New York surrounded by
women poets. The poets Griswold praised most and gave the
longest biographical sketches to were almost invariably
New Yorkers, though they were sometimes transplanted in
New York from New England or the South. It was much
easier to be included in Griswold's volume if you met him
regularly at Miss LynchJLfiL,parties or could get another New
York editor to submit your name. Of the fifty poets on
Griswold's preliminary list at least twelve lived in New
V
126
York City or had old family connections there. Two of
these had never before appeared in any anthology, either
Griswold's or anyone else1s. Those two were Ann Lynch, of
the famous parties, and Elise Justine Bayard, a woman from
one of the most established families in New York.
There is some significance in a poet's being included
on Griswold's first list. These were the poets that came
first to mind when Griswold tried to think of poets to
include. There is no way of knowing whether Griswold had
originally intended to add as many more poets to this
first list as he did. The poets that were added came from
a variety of sources and it is difficult to detect any
carefully thought out basis by which Griswold added names
to the list. A large number of the poets that Griswold
added later were suggested on an ad hoc basis by
Griswold's editorial cronies. At any rate, it is worth
looking at the first list to see what poets comprise it
and what significance it has.
The first eight poets on the list were not
contemporary. Samuel Kettell had, in his earlier
anthology, included some poets from the Revolutionary and
pre-Revolutionary period and three of these poets— Anne
Bradstreet, Mercy Warren, and Anne Eliza Bleecker— showed
127
up in Griswold*s volume. However, Griswold may have felt
more influence in his selection of early poets from
Elizabeth Ellet*s The Women of the American Revolution
published in 1848. Ellet and Griswold were good friends
at the time she and Griswold were researching their
volumes, and she called on him rather frequently in his
private study at the New York Historical Society,
borrowing books and asking his advice (Bayless 143). Four
of the eight poets that Griswold included from the
Revolutionary period had been included in Ellet*s first
edition and his biographical sketches of these women were
7
sometimes clearly dependent on Ellet.
The next thirty names on the list are taken mostly
from The Poets and Poetry of America and Gems from
American Female Poets. Only four of the poets in this
section had not appeared in either of those volumes. The
first of the four, Jane Lewers Gray, lived in Easton,
Pennsylvania, fifty-five miles from Philadelphia where
Griswold had worked during his tenure at Graham * s.
Griswold's description of Easton in the biographical note
as a "beautiful, romantic, and classical spot" may
!7. The four are Mercy Warren, Elizabeth Ferguson, Ann
Eliza Bleecker, and Margaretta Faugeres.
indicate that he had visited there and perhaps thus met
Gray. Sophia Little was a poet that had first appeared in
Kettell's anthology and had, in the early 1840's published i
several religious volumes as well as publishing poetry in
the periodicals (PP 107).
Griswold listed a woman named Daniels in his
preliminary list who was not included in The Female Poets
of America, though there is some evidence that he intended j
to include her. James Fields had given Griswold a copy of
The New Hampshire Book, which had included some of Mrs.
Daniels work, though she had never been included in any of
the general anthologies. Griswold mined the book for
possible inclusions in his volume, but found the pickings
slim. He wrote to Fields in mid-summer telling him that
he intended to include Mrs. Daniels and "I think one more"
*n The Female Poets of America. Griswold remained open to
any other poetesses Fields might want included. Griswold |
I
told Fields: {
The N.H.B. [New Hampshire Book] is not by
me now, but your advice will govern me in regard
to any who are your friends, and I shall be glad
if you will send me any sketches or poems of the
"granite" poetesses or those of the Bay State.
([July 20] [1848], CSmH)
Martha Day was the fourth poet in the section who had j
I
not appeared in any earlier anthologies. She was a child
prodigy who died in her early twenties, and Griswold was
jvery much attracted to this kind of poet. A number of the
|poets in the finished volume were considered child
j
prodigies: Francesca Canfield, Susan Archer Talley, Lucy
Hooper, the Davidson sisters. More than thirty of the
poets were estimated by Griswold to be in their twenties
when the book was published, and eight of the poets had
*
died before they turned twenty-five. Griswold's interest
in very young poets is probably significant. When he
describes their work he tends to focus on the "miraculous"
element of it, that a young person could have such a
talent for poetry. He often compares the poet to some
other "nine-day wonder" with whom the public might be
8
familiar. Griswold's interest in publishing an anthology
*
of women's poetry may have been in his mind somewhat
analogous to publicizing the history of child prodigies.
He was continually struck by the wonder of the fact that
America was producing so much poetry by women.
The last twelve names on Griswold's list come from a
l
jvariety of sources. Two poets that I have already
mentioned, Ann Lynch and Justine Bayard, were part of
Griswold's literary acquaintance in New York. "Edith
8. See earlier description of the Davidson sisters.
May," a Phildelphla poet named Anna Drinker, may have
known Griswold during the time he edited Graham1s in
Phildelphia. Some women became known to Griswold by
having their work published in earlier anthologies.
Amelia Welby was prominently featured in Gallagher's
Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West. and
had had a volume of poetry published subsequently with the
aid of Griswold. Rebecca S. Nichols had also been
included in Gallagher's volume.
In some cases the women to be included had published
volumes of poetry or prose within the last few years.
Catherine Warfield and Eleanor Lee, who were sisters
living in Kentucky, were included because Griswold had
read a volume of poems they had published in 1845 entitled
The Wife of Leon and Other Poems. When Griswold made up
the preliminary list he did not even know their names, but
listed them, as their title page had, as "Two Sisters of
the West." Griswold was able to get biographical
information on Warfield and Lee by writing to Gallagher
upon whom Griswold frequently relied for information on
Western writers. While Gallagher had not included them in
his anthology of Western literature, he knew of the
sisters and was happy to promote new Western literature in
i
this way (Gallagher to RWG, Oct. 6, 1848, PHi).
131
Another poet on the list that had had recent work
published was "Fanny Forester," also known as Emily
Judson. She had entered the New York literary circle with
the help of N. P. Willis, a friend of Griswold's, who had
published her things in The New Mirror which he edited (FP
I r- -n-TTi-T- 1
j
241). In 1846 a collection of her sketches, essays, and
poems were published in a volume entitled Alderbrook. and
in 1848 she published a memoir of her husband's first wife
which proved to be remarkably popular, perhaps because of
its novelty. Lucy Hooper was also added because her work
had been published in a volume. She had died in 1841 and
a volume entitled The Poetical Remains of the Late Lucy
Hooper appeared in 1842 with a memoir by John Keese.
Griswold had reviewed the book briefly on the editor's
page of Graham's. praising Keese's memoir as much as he
praised Hooper's poetry.
Griswold discovered one writer on the list by reading
a Western newspaper (FP 372). Alice Cary was living in a
small town outside of Cincinnati with her sister Phoebe,
i
!also a poet, when Griswold saw their work, possibly in a
I
Universalist newspaper called The Sentinel. Griswold's
sponsorship, first in publishing the two sisters in his
anthology and then in helping them to publish elsewhere,
was the major factor in their literary success. It is
132
interesting to note that Griswold did not originally
intend to include Phoebe in The Female Poets of America.
Her name did not appear on the preliminary list. It
would, however, have been impossible to publish one
without the other. The sisters were very close and their
first volume of poems was a joint venture, Poems of Alice
and Phoebe Cary, published in 1850 under Griswold's
sponsorship.
Maria White Lowell and "Grace Greenwood" were poets
with literary connections that might recommend them for
Griswold's volume. Lowell was the wife of James Russell
Lowell, whose work was becoming nationally known in 1848
with the publication of A Fable for Critics and the book
form of The Bigelow Papers. The attention being paid to
Lowell put a larger spotlight on his wife and may have
made Griswold aware of her. Maria Lowell published only
occasionally, particularly after her marriage, and never
thought of herself as a poetess. Griswold may have been
placating Lowell who had called him an "ass" and a "knave"
j several years earlier (Scudder, I, 164), and would compare
him to a gooseherd as well as a goose in his Fable for
Critics. Griswold may have hoped to improve his
relationship with Lowell by including his wife in the
volume. Maria Lowell's biographical sketch also gave
133
Griswold the opportunity to praise her husband; he
described Lowell there as "a fine poet and true hearted
i
man" (FP 388).
"Grace Greenwood" was the nom de plume of Sara Jane
i
Clarke, a sister of J. B. Clarke, Griswold's early !
employer on the Syracuse newspaper. The Constitutionalist
(Bayless 12). Griswold had heard of her under her
pseudonym early in the 1840's when Horace Binney Wallace |
had mentioned her as a possible contributor to a magazine
he proposed to publish (Wallace to RWG, Aug. 11, [1841],
MB). In 1846 J. B. Clarke sent Griswold a letter of
introduction for his sister, who was coming to the city
and would need an entree into literary circles (May 18,
1846, MB). Clarke's letter mentioned that his sister "has
been called a poetess," and heaped praise upon Griswold.
Whether Griswold met her at that time is in doubt since he
was getting ready to move to New York the next month. Two
years later Griswold wrote to her and requested a j
selection of her poetry for his anthology (n.d., ViU). In
I
the years following the publication of The Female Poets of j
I
America he expressed some dislike for her writing (RWG to j
Fields, Jan. 28, 1854, CSmH), but the anthology described I
J
her as one of "the most industrious and successful of our ;
authors” who "has written with perhaps equal facility and ;
i
i
i
134
felicity in every style" (FP 390). Griswold gave some
credit for Sara Jane Clarke's success to the editorial
help she must have received from her brother, Griswold's
friend.
The last name on Griswold's preliminary list was Mrs.
Thornton. Thornton was one of the poets from The New
Hampshire Book that Griswold eventually decided to leave
out of his volume. T. B. Read and Caroline May left her
out of their anthologies as well.
Griswold's preliminary list relied very heavily on
his former anthologies with some new places given to women
whom he knew personally or who had recently published
their work in a volume. The final list of poets which
Griswold sent to his publishers in mid-November added
forty-six names which Griswold had accumulated in various
ways. Very few of these poets had appeared in Griswold's
Gems from American Female Poets; only Eliza Follen, Mary
E. Hewitt, and Anna Peyre Dinnies could claim that
distinction. Some were old acquaintances; Griswold had
met Juliet H. L. Campbell at West Point when she was a
I
teenager accompanying her father on an official visit (FP
355). M-i— Tv—W. Chandler and Mary L. Lawson were
Philadelphia residents and had known Griswold while he
135
lived there. He had published their work in Graham1s
Magazine. Phoebe Cary was added because of Griswold's
admiration for her sister, Alice.
The largest proportion of names added to this list,
however, came from two sources: the New York literary
circle and recommendations by Griswold's friends. At
least ten of the forty-six added women lived in New York
City or had their family roots there. Mary E. Hewitt,
Elizabeth C. Kinney, and Ann S. Stephens were fixtures in
the literary community. Hewitt was a very close friend of
Fanny Osgood and would prepare a memorial volume to Osgood
at her death. Stephens was Griswold's old nemesis at
Graham * s. but Griswold would not have thought of leaving
her out on that score. Griswold generally tried to
placate his enemies by flattery and only went on the
attack when flattery did not work. Elizabeth Kinney
belonged to a prosperous New York merchant family and was
married to a journalist on the Newark Daily Advertiser.
i
Several other women on the list were from fine old
New York families. One was Mary Noel Meigs who was was
related to two of the early poets included in the volume,
Anne Eliza Bleecker and Margaretta V. Faugeres. She was
the granddaughter, according to Griswold, of "the last
136
survivor of the staff of Washington," Major William Popham
(FP 270), and her poetry had been published in a volume in
1845. Jessie McCartee had similarly blue-chip
credentials, and Griswold could not praise her connections
enough. Her grandmother was "the celebrated" Isabella
!
Graham, a philanthropist who had begun a number of
charities in New York City before her death in 1814; her
father, a merchant named Divie Bethune, was a man "whose
life was a series of illustration of the dignity and
beauty of human nature." Even her brother had already
achieved success as "one of our most eloquent preachers
and accomplished authors" (FP 131). Another New York
poet, Francesca Canfield was the daughter of an Italian
physician and scholar whom Griswold described as "intimate
with many eminent persons" (FP 135). Social position and
family connections were very important to Griswold who had
earned his own way by his wits.
Some of the New York women that Griswold added to the
volume were notable for their contributions to the
magazines. Anna Cora Mowatt had lived in New York for
only a few years while her husband was ill and had made a
name for herself by writing for Graham * s, Godey1s, and The
Democratic Review. A. R. St. John of Brooklyn also
contributed to The Democratic Review as well as several
miscellanies (FP 211).
Even women who did not live in New York City had
become known there by publishing in the newspapers and
magazines. Griswold chose several poets from New
York-based periodicals. Elizabeth J. Eames lived in
upstate New York but was familiar to Griswold from things
she published in Greeley's New Yorker and the Tribune, as
| well as her contributions to Graham1s and the Southern
(
Literary Messenger (FP 246). It seems likely, in fact,
that any friend of Greeley's would make her way into the
volume, since Greeley sent Griswold suggestions for the
volume quite frequently. The Home Journal was one of the
publishers for Sarah T. Bolton's poetry as well as that of
the Fuller sisters. The editors of the Home Journal
praised Frances and Metta Fuller to Griswold as showing
"unquestionable signs of true genius,” an opinion that
Griswold duly recorded in his biographical sketch (FP
368). Anna H. Phillips also contributed to the Home
| Journal and N. P. Willis, the editor of the journal, was
quoted extensively in her biographical sketch in praise of
her poem "Love and Fame" (FP 399). Susan Pindar published
mostly in the Knickerbocker (FP 343).
138
Griswold was often influenced by his literary friends
in his choice of poets for the volume. They offered him
suggestions of women to include and sent biographical
material for poets they knew well. Fields wrote early in
June offering several names of New Hampshire poets. While
Mrs. Daniels did not make it into the volume, one "New
Hampshire notory" was added in this way, Susan Barnes. In
a later letter Fields described her poetry as "full of
passionate feeling and eminently worthy of a place" (Aug.
!15, 1848, MB). Fields also cast a deciding vote when
I
Griswold could not make up his mind whether to include a
poet or not.
W. D. Gallagher also sent Griswold suggestions for
jthe volume. He had been asked by Griswold to collect
i
biographical material on Catherine Warfield, Eleanor Lee,
Laura Thurston, and Margaret L. Bailey. With this
material he sent along information on "one or two other
lady writers of the West, with reference to whose
productions at least, if not whose existence, you are most
probably ignorant" (Oct. 6, 1848, PHi). These poets were
S. J. Howe, of Burlington, Ohio and Sophia H. Oliver of
Cincinnati. Gallagher was critical of Howe's ability,
saying that she had "more ambition for Poetry, than
capacity." Yet Howe had written "a great deal" and if
139
I
Griswold "were not in such haste, I could cull you half a
dozen pieces from the mass of it, which would be
creditable to her, and interesting to you" (Oct. 6, 1848,
PHi). Griswold was in haste, however, since it was
already the beginning of October and so he never saw
Howe's poetry for himself. However, Gallagher had passed
along poems by his friend Sophia H. Oliver whom he
described as "a greater than Mrs. H., I think, yet an
inferior of those whom you name." She had "written some
sweet things" and had "many admirers" (Oct. 6, 1848,
PHI). Griswold included her.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith suggested another poet for the
volume. In a letter posted July 5 she sent Griswold a
"specimen of owl-like conceit"— that is, a poem— from a
writer whose name she did not reveal until late in the
letter in the hopes that Griswold's curiosity would be
jpiqued (Smith to RWG, n.d., PHi). The poet was Harriet
Winslow of Boston. Griswold took the hint and included
her in The Female Poets of America. It is interesting to
note that he published only one of her poems in the
1
anthology, possibly the one Oakes Smith sent him.
Two of the poets Griswold added to the final list
were friendly with Poe and had published in the Southern
140
Literary Messenger. Griswold was very conscious of Poe's
opinions of various writers, and he had a great deal of
respect for Poe's critical judgment. Yet Griswold was
also jealous of Poe and had felt competitive with him ever
since he had replaced Poe at Graham * s. When Griswold put
Jane Taylor Lomax, a Virginia poet, on his list he was
certainly thinking of Poe. He himself felt no great love
for her poetry; he had written to Fields for reassurance
in including her (Fields to RWG, Aug. 15, 1848, MB). But
a line in her biographical sketch reveals the presence of
Poe in his decision to include her. Griswold said of
Lomax that "nearly all her productions appeared in the
Southern Literary Messenger, which was edited by a
personal friend [of Lomax'], at Richmond" (FP 260). The
friend was, of course, Poe, and the remark— certainly an
odd one to make in a published anthology— appeared to put
the responsibility for any public attention Lomax might
enjoy on Poe.
Another of Poe's protegees that Griswold added to the
list was Susan Archer Talley, a deaf poet who lived in
Richmond. Like Lomax she published in the Southern
Literary Messenger and Griswold sought information from
its present editor, John Reuben Thompson, for her
biographical sketch. The sketch Thompson submitted was
141
not actually written by him, but by "a friend of the
[Talley] family" (Thompson to RWG, Oct. 12, 1848, MB).
Griswold's pattern in writing the biographical sketches
was to use as much material as possible from the
information sent to him by others, closely paraphrasing
and often quoting large sections without using quotation
marks or giving credit to the author. When the opinions
expressed in the sketch did not suit him he would cut and
paste, sometimes simply tacking on a last paragraph that
expressed his own opinion. The sketch of Susan Talley was
a very enthusiastic one, partly because it was written by
a friend of her family, partly because Griswold loved the
novelty of a deaf poet, and partly because she was a close
friend of Poe's. Ironically, after the sketch was
published Poe wrote to Thompson who procured the sketch
saying: "I am glad to see that Griswold, although
imperfectly, has done [Miss Talley] justice in his late
i
I'Female Poets of America'" (Jan. 13, 1849, CSmH).
Griswold was influenced by Poe in the choice of two
•other poets as well. Marguerite St. Leon Loud was a
Philadelphia poet that Griswold had probably known while
he edited Graham's. but in her biographical sketch he
reprinted Poe's opinion of her rather than risk his own.
He said:
142
Mr. Edgar A. Poe, in his Autography, says
of Mrs. Loud, that she "has imagination of no
common order, and unlike many of her sex, is not
'Content to dwell in decencies forever.1 While
she can, upon occasion, compose the ordinary
singsong with all the decorous proprieties which
are in fashion, she yet ventures very frequently
into a more ethereal region." (FP 141}
Griswold is using Poe's comments in a curious way.
Griswold was not impressed with Loud's poetry; he did not
publish her in Graham1s during his tenure. To avoid
criticizing her he published the opinion of Poe, which is
lukewarm praise at best, and let Poe accept the blame for
it.
This setting up of Poe as a critical judge when
Griswold wanted to avoid a backlash is even more apparent
in the biographical sketch of Estelle Lewis. Again
Griswold used Poe to praise the poet, in this case her
poem "The Forsaken." Griswold quoted Poe as having
described the work as "inexpressibly beautiful." Griswold
then reprinted the poem and at the end commented: "There
is a very fine poem by Motherwell, by which this may have
been suggested, though if Mrs. Lewis had read it, it was
of course forgotten by her when she composed The Forsaken"
(FP 263). The pertinent passages from Motherwell
followed. This was a slap at both Mrs. Lewis, who was a
plagiarist, if an unconscious one, and at Poe for not
recognizing the similarity to Motherwell.
An interesting shift occured in Griswold's attitude
toward Margaret Fuller as he added her name to the final
' list of poets. Greeley had been insistent that Griswold
I
should read and appreciate Fuller's work before he !
i
published The Prose Writers of America. Griswold read but
did not appreciate Fuller and he had castigated her in his
prose anthology. He seems to have repented of his former
ideas, however, by the time he compiled the list for The \
t
Female Poets of America. He included Fuller, ranking her
"among the first authors of her sex," and praising her
"wide . . . range of literary culture" (FP 251). It
was a bit awkward that Fuller was not really a poet, but J
like most of the literary women of her day she had written |
some things that could be included. Greeley's nagging had
»
i finally paid off.
Two other literary figures were out collecting poets
for Griswold to include. Dr. Francis sent Griswold a long
I
letter about Cynthia Taggart from which Griswold quoted
extensively in his sketch (FP 133). And George K. Boker,
a poet and dramatist from Philadelphia, sent information
on Eliza Sproat. The letter from Boker is especially
144
revealing of how literary information could be procured in
the days before the Dictionary of American Biography:
"Enclosed you will find as much of Miss Sproat as I can
get hold of. If you want more you must fish from Read's
book &c. The biography is as complete as may be, her
life, as she says, having been so far entirely devoid of
interest" (Boker to RWG, Oct. 31, 1848, PHi). Griswold
must have been particularly galled by Boker*s suggestion
that he steal from his primary rival.
In looking back at the selection process for The
Female Poets of America two features stand out. One is
the poor quality of Griswold's research for the volume.
The other is the narrow range of Griswold's choices. In
choosing poets for the volume Griswold relied heavily on
the work he had done for The Poets and Poetry of America j
seven years earlier. When he researched that book he i
claimed to have looked through five hundred volumes of
American poetry so as to have an overview of what had been
i
written. No such claim could be made for The Female Poets j
of America. He had chosen poets not by looking over the
entire field and eliminating the unworthy, but by relying
on choices he had made seven years earlier when he
compiled The Poets and Poetry of America and its spinoff,
Gems from American Female Poets. At a time when women
i
*
145
were becoming writers in record numbers Griswold did his
readers a disservice by relying so heavily on old
research.
Griswold's selection process suffered from the lack
of any established set of criteria by which he might judge
a poet's value. He relied mostly on his own instinct and
the opinions of his friends. His own instinct sometimes
altered considerably depending on his mood; the change in
his view of Margaret Puller from 1847 when The Prose
Writers was published and 1848 when The Female Poets was
published is a good example. His friends' opinions
affected him too much; he tended to swallow them whole.
Had Griswold written out some criteria by which the poets
would be selected the book would show more consistent
quality. As it is, some very poor versifiers are included
with other poets of much greater skill. Griswold could,
for example, have decided that he would only include women
who had published volumes of their poetry through
reputable presses or women who were regular contributors
to at least one literary periodical. Other women would
have to show extraordinary merit in their poetry to be
included. But, in fact, Griswold did not set up any
criteria whatsoever for inclusion.
146
Had he used some established criteria they would have
dictated a systematic approach to his research. To
collect names of women who were publishing in literary
; periodicals he would have had to look over all extant
i
i periodicals rather than only those published in New York
and Philadelphia. For women publishing volumes of their
i
1 poetry he would have had to go to publishing records for
i
. an overview. Instead he did his research piecemeal,
gathering some from his own books, taking unsolicited
advice from whichever literary friends happened to give
i it, adding names of people he happened to know
I personally. This is the research method of the
! anthologist in a hurry, and Griswold's haste guaranteed
i
i the haphazard collection of names.
The other major fault in Griswold's selection of
l
names is the narrowness of his final choices. The title,
*
The Female Poets of America suggests comprehensiveness; in
f
■ fact, most of the women included in the volume were
^ contemporary poets from New England or New York. The book
| was neither a history of women's poetry in America, nor an
i
j overview of contemporary women's poetry. Griswold
| included one seventeenth century poet and five eighteenth
century poets. The rest of the ninety-three poets
included were born after the Revolutionary War, most of
147
them between 1810 and 1825. Most of the women lived in
• big cities, especially New York, Philadephia, and Boston.
; There were almost no Southern women included, except those
i
I whom Griswold had met while he was in Charleston and those
who wrote for The Southern Literary Messenger. Only a
i
handful of Western writers were included and those that
were came from one of three sources: F. W. Thomas, a
; journalist friend of Griswold's from Charleston who had
lived in Cincinnati for a decade; George Prentice, a poet
whom Griswold had included in The Poets and Poetry of
America and the editor of The Louisville Journal; and
: William D. Gallagher, editor of Specimens of the Poetical
Literature of the West.
Griswold included in the volume women that he knew,
women who had lived in the same cities he had— Boston
where he worked off and on during the late 30's and early
i
40's, Philadelphia during the period at Graham * s,
, Charleston during his marriage to Charlotte, New York for
t
I
most of his adult life. Griswold's friendships with women
! intensified in 1848 when it became known that he would
j
; publish an anthology of women's poetry.
j Those friendships with women were central to the way
J in which Griswold put together The Female Poets of
I
148
America. Griswold made decisions for the book based on
his personal feelings and needs. What follows is a
history of Griswold's relationship with four women during
and shortly after the time he was preparing The Female
Poets of America. By looking closely at these
relationships it becomes easier to see how women poets
related to the men who promoted and published their work.
It also gives an idea how Griswold presented himself among
the women he published.
Griswold had known Fanny Osgood's poetry since the
early 1840's and she is included in both The Poets and
Poetry of America and Gems from American Female Poets.
Yet there is no indication that the two knew each other
well in the early 1840's when those books were published.
However, when Griswold moved to New York he met Fanny
often at Miss Lynch's parties. They had many mutual
friends and Griswold came to admire the person as much as
he admired the poet. In the summer of 1848 Fanny was
separated from her husband and had recently cooled her
relationship with Poe. Griswold stepped into Poe's
place. He began by paying visits, encouraging her
writing, and carrying notes to her from friends. In a
letter to Fields in 1848 he told of one of his visits:
I read to Mrs. Osgood your note, and
carried to her from Taylor the clever paragraph
you sent for her. She is in all things the most
admirable woman I ever knew. If I could
persuade her to do herself justice in some
form— to write more long work like 'Euridice'— I
should confer more happiness on the world than
ever in [illegible] way. ([1848], CSmH)
I By January 1849 the relationship had gone beyond
' friendship, though it would have been impossible for
either party to admit it. In early January Osgood
1 published a pamphlet entitled A Letter about the Lions, in
9
imitation of Lowell's A Fable for Critics. Lowell had
compared Griswold to an ass. Osgood saw him differently:
And Griswold, with his taste refined,
And rare discrimination,
Resets in purest, richest gold.
The pearls of all the nation.
Like Tennyson, he gives the world
His "vision of— blue women,"
And paints them with impartial pen,
And critical acumen.
Griswold was clearly smitten. He sent Osgood a
volume of poems by Leigh Hunt, inscribed with two lines
' from one of Fanny's poems published in Sartain's Union
Magazine for January 1849: "Would I were any thing, that
i thou dost love! / A flower, a shell, a wavelet, or a
j cloud— ." Fanny returned the poetic favor by sending
I 9. The January 5, 1849 edition of The New-York Tribune
1 announced the pamphlet as just off the press.
150
Griswold on March 3, 1849 (MB) an acrostic with their
names intertwined:
For one, whose being is to mine a star.
Trembling I weave in lines of love and fun
What Fame before has echoes near and far
A sonnet if you like,— I'll give you one
To be cross-questioned ere its truth is solv'd
Here veiled and hidden in a rhyming wreath
A name is turned with mine in cunning sheath
And unless by some marvel rare evolved
Forever folded from all idler eyes
Silent and secret still it treasured lies
Whilst mine goes winding onward, as a rill
Thro* a deep wood in unseen joyance dances
Calling in melody's bewijLdering thrill
Whilst thro'dim leaves its partner dreams and glances.
Fanny's husband, S. S. Osgood, seems not to have
taken the flirtation too seriously. He left New York on
10
February 5, 1849 to search for gold in the West,
leaving his wife in the constant company of Griswold.
Griswold was determined that Fanny Osgood should have her
poems published in a volume in time for the Christmas
trade. To this end, Osgood gave Griswold her power of
attorney on March 18, 1849 so that he could find her a
publisher and work out the legal details involved in the
project (March 19, 1849, MH). Griswold was ecstatic in
his new task. He wrote to Fields in February:
10. See Griswold's sketch of Mrs. Osgood in the December
1850 issue of The International Magazine, II, 131-140.
151
"The Poetical Writings of Frances Sargeant
Osgood— When the brain suggests this name to the
lips, the heart comes up and tunes them to
melodious utterance— The Poetical Writings of
Frances Sargent Osgood . . . are to be
published splendidly— in the style of Mrs.
Sigourney's very pious verses, sometime before
the holidays, which are this year to be dearer
than ever, for such a wave of delicious music
that is to flow through them into so many
hearts." (RWG to Fields, [1848], CSmH)
i Fanny Osgood was apparently living in a hotel at this
time and it seems that she and Griswold had made some
; plans to give up their respective hotel accommodations and
i share a house. They were prevented from doing so by
gossip about their relationship. Fanny complained in a
i letter to her mother on April 23:
How I long to see you— If it had not been
for these wicked calumnies of the Whelpley's I
should have been at housekeeping by this time
with you to visit me— & Mr. Griswold & his
daughter boarding with me— but after all this
talk I could not of course take him & I could
not afford to go to housekeeping without his
assistance. (April 23, 1849, RPB-JH)
The incident may have subdued the relationship for a
time, but their attachment to each other remained strong.
Osgood's book of poems was published by Carey and Hart,
I
! Griswold's own publishers, and it was dedicated to
Rufus Wilmot Griswold
As a Souvenir of Admiration for his Genius
Of Regard for his Generous Character,
And of Gratitude for his valuable Literary Counsels,
152
By his attached friend,
The Author (Bayless 174)
Griswold reciprocated by promoting the book with all the
energy he possessed. He sent Abraham Hart a long list of
people who would be suitable reviewers for the book (n.d.,
NN-B) and instructed him to send copies to them. He
himself wrote a gushing review published in The New-York
Tribune on December 17.
Despite Griswold's help the book failed. It was
apparent to booksellers within two months of publication
that they had better unload their stock. A Boston
bookseller and publisher, Phillips, Sampson and Company
wrote to Carey and Hart to warn them that they planned to
return half of the two hundred copies they had ordered.
The New York booksellers did no better. Despite Osgood's
personal popularity in New York, Putnam's sold only eleven
copies by the end of January (Abraham Hart to RWG, Jan.
31, 1850, MB).
Fanny Osgood did not live to know of her failure.
She was dying of tuberculosis and was bedridden in the
winter of 1849. Her husband returned from the West late
in the winter and took care of her to the last. Griswold
was still a frequent visitor and he asked Osgood to write
153
down her memories of Poe for him to include in the Poe
edition and the biography of the poet he intended to
write. She did so. Griswold's attachment to Fanny Osgood
remained even after her death in 1850. He agreed to edit
a memorial volume to her which had been instigated by her
close friend, Mary Hewitt. Fanny's untimely death made
Griswold more sentimental about her than ever. He wrote
to Fields to tell him of the upcoming memorial: "God was
very merciful in that he gave me such a friend as Fanny .
I write the name reverently, pausing, as we speak of
Him she is gone to see. Well, I would illustrate my
gratefulness by doing her honor" (Aug. 12, 1850, CSmH).
Griswold's infatuation with Fanny had its effect on
The Female Poets of America. Griswold included
thirty-nine of her poems, more than any other poet in the
book had printed. Her biographical sketch was one of the
longest and most complimentary that Griswold wrote. He
said:
Of none of our writers has the excellence
been more steadily progessive. Every month her
powers have seemed to expand and her sympathies
to deepen. With an ear delicately susceptible
to the harmonies of language, and a light and
pleasing fancy, she always wrote musically and
often with elegance; but her later poems are
marked by a freedom of style, a tenderness of
feeling, and a wisdom of apprehension, and are
informed with a grace, so undefinable, but so
pervading and attractive, that the consideration
154
to which she is entitled is altogether different
in kind, as well as in degree, from that which
was awarded to the playful, piquant, and
capricious improvisatrice of former years." (FP
273)
Griswold established another, very different,
4
; relationship in the summer of 1848 with Sarah Helen
j Whitman. Whitman was at that time living in Providence
!
i and had become very interested in Edgar Allan Poe, though
she had never met him. Through Ann Lynch she had sent Poe
, some verses to be read in his honor at a Valentine party
(
! at Lynch's home (Lynch to Whitman, Jan. 31, 1848,
i
1 RPB-JH). Lynch refused to read them and warned Whitman
that Poe had "not behaved very honorably" during a recent
"great war in blue-stockinqdom" and therefore was no
longer included in her parties. It took several letters
to Whitman to convince her not to publish the verses
(Lynch to Whitman, Jan. 31, 1848; Feb. 21, 1848; March 10,
1848, RPB-JH), and even then Mrs. Whitman's interest in
, Poe remained unabated.
I
Poe was also interested in Mrs. Whitman and it was
(
I
i his interest in her that probably aroused Griswold's
I interest in her as he prepared his anthology. Griswold
! knew her poetry; she had been included in the Appendix of
The Poets and Poetry of America and briefly in Gems from
American Female Poets. but she had never been given a
155
prominent place. In fact, Griswold had even bungled her
name in The Poets and Poetry of America calling her Sarah
Ellen Whitman. But late in the summer of 1848 Griswold
was determined to make her acquaintance and he made a trip
i
i to Providence to meet her and get information for the
I anthology. He charmed her by assuring her of Poe's
interest in her writings. When Whitman "asked him how it
was that Poe had incurred the enmity of so many of the
literary men of New York," Griswold told her that "it
certainly was not that he had done anything exceptionally
wrong to deserve it:— That he had always said Poe was not
so much to blame in his literary embroilments as were his
enemies" (Whitman to John Ingram, postmarked March 9
[1874], ViU). Whitman was impressed by this support of
Poe as well as Griswold's appearance. She later described
him as "very handsome" and as looking "not more than
thirty" (Whitman to Ingram, Sept. 29, 1874, ViU). She
agreed to be included in Griswold's anthology and in the
! coming months Griswold helped her publish her poetry in
11
literary periodicals.
11. Undated letters in Boston Public Library contain
poetry and discuss publication details.
156
Griswold's assessment of Poe in the presence of Mrs.
Whitman is a good example of his duplicity when it came to
getting something he wanted. He wanted to give Mrs.
Whitman a prominent place in his book; to do that he
needed information from her for the biographical sketch
and copies of poems to include. Poe's interest in
Whitman's poetry gave her increased status in Griswold's
mind and her developing relationship with Poe after
Griswold's visit to Providence could only strengthen
Griswold's support of her. Whitman met Poe on September
12
2, 1848 and by December they were engaged.
It is especially interesting to consider this early
meeting of Griswold and Mrs. Whitman in comparison to
their relationship after Poe's death. When Whitman
criticized Griswold for a vindictive obituary signed
"Ludwig" that he wrote just after Poe died, Griswold
reacted as the injured party. He told Pabodie in a letter
dated June 8, 1852: "For Mrs. Whitman I have great
respect and sympathy. On this subject, however, if not on
some others, she is insane" (NN-B). In a note at the
12. The contract concerning the marriage is in the Berg
Collection at the New York Public Library dated December
15, 1848.
bottom of the page Griswold explained his asterisk. The
other subject on which Whitman was insane was
"spiritualism perhaps." For Mrs. Whitman's part, she felt
betrayed by Griswold. He had seemed so supportive of Poe
and had so insinuated himself into her good graces that
the Griswold that attacked Poe so openly seemed like
another person. It took her some time, in fact, after the
Ludwig sketch was published for her to fully conceive how
far Griswold had misled her as regards his real feelings
toward Poe. Three weeks after Poe's death she was still
on friendly terms with Griswold, sending a condolence
message to Mrs. Clemm through him (Oct. 28, 1849,
RPB-JH).
Sarah Helen Whitman was one of a number of women who
felt taken up by Griswold only to be betrayed later.
Griswold could be very charming when he chose to be. He
had a way of focusing his attention on a person that was
both flattering and misleading. He exercised this charm
considerably on the women he included in his volume. He
praised their poetry, helped them publish, and generally
made them feel like significant poets. When he was
finished with the anthology and went on to other things
these women felt set adrift.
158
In some cases Griswold did not pursue the poet; she
pursued him. This was certainly the case with Estelle
i
I Anna Lewis whom Griswold had left out of both The Poets
and Poetry of America and Gems from American Female
i Poets. She was the daughter of a wealthy Cuban of Spanish
i
1 and English heritage who passed along his melancholy
I
I
! temperament and love of poetry to his daughter. At 1 7 she
i
married a Brooklyn attorney, Sylvanus D. Lewis, who
encouraged her poetry and spoiled her much as her father
- had done. Mr. Lewis introduced his wife to Poe with whom
; he made friends in 1845, and he also introduced his wife's
poetry to Griswold. On November 2, 1846 Mr. Lewis wrote
to Griswold to recommend his wife for the 1846 edition of
The Poets and Poetry of America that was about to be
published: "Will you be so kind as to inform me by return
, mail whether that edition is to contain any specimens from
the pen of Mrs. S. Anna Lewis author of 'Records of the
I
Heart,1 & c . o r any notice of her" (S. Lewis to RWG, Nov.
, 2, 1846, MB).
S
>
Mrs. Lewis1 Records of the Heart was a volume of her
| poetry published in 1844 which Mr. Lewis assured Griswold
had been cordially received by the public. He also told
Griswold about the new volume that Mrs. Lewis was about to
publish, entitled The Children of the Sea after the major
159
| poem in the collection. Lewis described this poem as "of
! a far higher order than any she has yet published,
l
; justifying the expectation of her friends that she will
not be overlooked in the present edition [of The Poets and
; Poetry of America]1 1 (S. Lewis to RWG, Nov. 2, 1846, MB).
If Mrs. Lewis' success in the publication of her volumes
were not enough to insure her inclusion, Mr. Lewis was
willing to add monetary inducements. He assured Griswold
the he "would satisfy you for any trouble you may take in
this matter, & would enclose the same in this were I sure
you were at present at Philadelphia" (S. Lewis to RWG,
! Nov. 2, 1846, MB).
Whether this statement indicates that Lewis later
sent money to Griswold to defray the time and expense
Griswold would go to in order to include Mrs. Lewis, or
whether it only indicates that he was willing to do so, it
certainly indicates Lewis' determination that his wife's
poetry should reach the public. This was not the only
' time when Mr. Lewis paved the way for his wife's poetry
}
with money. He also paid Poe to write favorable reviews,
which Poe, always desperate for money, wrote and published
I (Woodberry, II, 446).
160
1 Mrs. Lewis was not included in Griswold's preliminary
list of names for the anthology, but she was included in
the final list. She wrote to Griswold in November sending
him a copy of her newly published The Children of the Sea
and pointing out poems she thought might be especially
; suitable for the anthology. She also assured him that her
book was selling rapidly and invited him to visit (E.
i
Lewis to RWG, Nov. 13, 1848, PHi). I have already
mentioned Griswold's criticism of Mrs. Lewis in her
biographical sketch in the anthology. It must have been a
tremendous disappointment to her after such a careful
campaign to capture the interest and approval of this
important editor. Yet Mrs. Lewis hid her disappointment
well, inviting Griswold to visit her very frequently in
1849. Griswold received frequent notes requesting an
"uninterrupted conversation on businesss matters" (Jan. 22
[1849], PHi) or requesting his advice on "several literary
matters" (Jan. 7 [1849], PHi). More often than not
Griswold obeyed the summons, and occasionally he called on
his own (E. Lewis to RWG, Aug. 20, 1849, PHi). Mrs.
i
■ Lewis's language in communicating with Griswold on these
j occasions was perfectly chivalric. She wrote in November
1849:
161
And now, my dear “Confident" [sic], permit
me to appoint you the Guardian of my Children of
1 the Brain. I feel confident that tinder your
protection they will be (as they say) well
! bought up. Be assured, you will never find me
| ungrateful— Ah, no! I could worship, the Being.
| who would take a true interest in the
development of my mind (E. Lewis to RWG, Nov. 3,
1849, PHi).
Despite Mrs. Lewis' apparent friendliness to Griswold
I
■ she never quite accepted his insulting remarks in the
i biographical sketch. After the anthology was published
both the Lewises and their friend Poe tried to get
Griswold to change the sketch. Poe was quite persistent
in his effort which may indicate that he expected some
remuneration for his efforts similar to what he had
received for the reviews he had written earlier. He wrote
Griswold a note asking for a more just appraisal of Mrs.
Lewis and promising a review of The Female Poets of
America for the Southern Literary Messenger. He also
invited Griswold to Fordham for a visit (Harrison, XVII,
327). Griswold did visit him in the spring and Estelle
Lewis was discussed at that time (Harrison, XVII,
415-16). Very likely the two made arrangements for Poe to
rewrite the sketch of Mrs. Lewis, for on June 28, 1849 Poe
j wrote to Griswold telling him that he had left a sealed
envelope containing a rewritten notice at Mrs. Lewis'
home. Mrs. Lewis was supposed to be unaware of the
contents of the envelope, but more than likely she had
; figured out the mystery since Mrs. Clemm had told her that
i
I Poe and Griswold had been discussing her place in the new
t
edition of The Female Poets of America (Harrison, XVII,
415-16).
i
i
j Sylvanus Lewis also brought pressure to bear on
j Griswold, almost certainly at the prompting of his wife.
: Griswold had told Mr. Lewis that he intended to change the
I
I sketch, probably by substituting the one written by Poe,
{
| and early in September Lewis reminded him of what he had
said. The changes, said Lewis, would be "most gratifying
to her numerous friends and admirers; and therefore, I am
, certain, [will] increase the sale of the Book" (Passages
252). Again Lewis was more than willing to put up the
money that such a change required. The expense for the
new stereotyping would be $2.60 per page. Lewis offered
to pay this expense if Griswold would write the sketch and
I do the proofreading.
Lewis also straightened out a misunderstanding over
i
: Mrs. Lewis' name. Her baptismal name was Estelle Anna,
j but her family called her Anna. Occasionally they used
I
her first name, which they shortened to Stella. When
Estelle began publishing she did so under the name S. Anna
163
' Lewis, but an editor mistook the "S." to stand for Sarah
i
; and so she was frequently published as Sarah Anna Lewis.
t
, That is how her name appeared on the title page of Records
of the Heart from which Griswold had copied her name. In
fact, it is not surprising that there should have been a
mixup over Mrs. Lewis' name. Her letters to Griswold were
' sometimes signed "S. Anna Lewis," sometimes "Estelle," and
later in her career most frequently "Stella."
I Despite all these negotiations for Estelle's improved
presentation in the book, her notice was never changed.
There are several possible reasons for this. For one
thing, Poe was Mrs. Lewis' strongest weapon with Griswold
1 and Poe died before the next edition of The Female Poets
was published. Griswold did not like her poetry himself
and he did not perceive Mrs. Lewis as having sufficient
political clout without Poe's support to warrant a change
in the sketch. For another thing, Griswold knew he was
being manipulated by the Lewises. Griswold loved to be
flattered and courted, but the Lewises applied too much
| pressure and applied it too frequently for Griswold to
! mistake their attentions as real admiration. It has also
i
been said that Fanny Osgood disliked Mrs. Lewis, and here
may lie Griswold's major objection to her (Ticknor 133).
164
i Fanny's opinion weighed heavily with him; he was more
interested in pleasing her than in pleasing Mrs. Lewis.
i
Fanny Osgood was not the only woman with whom
1 Griswold became romantically entangled due to his work on
The Female Poets of America. In the summer of 1848 as he
chose women to include in the volume he began a
correspondence with Alice Cary of Mt. Healthy, Ohio that
nearly led to matrimony. Griswold had seen Alice's poetry
in a Western newspaper and had written to her asking her
for biographical information and for permission to publish
some poems of hers that he had on hand in the anthology.
Cary replied on July 3 sending him additional poems and
giving Griswold permission to publish anything that she or
her sister Phoebe had published.
Griswold was very impressed with Alice Cary's poetry
and was even more impressed after he learned of the Carys'
background. The education of the two girls had, according
to Alice, been
limited to the meagre and infrequent
advantages of an obscure district school whence
; we were removed altogether at a very early age.
With nothing from which to draw but our own
hearts, subjected to the toils and privations of
! poverty and orphanage, with neither books nor
literary friends to encourage our predilections,
! we have been, and still are, humble worshippers
j of the glorious Temple of Song. (July 3, 1848,
MB)
Alice was delighted with Griswold's interest and suggested
in a postscript to this first letter that Griswold might
be interested in publishing a volume of their poetry (July
3, 1848, MB).
The Carys subsequently came under Griswold's literary
sponsorship while he pursued a more personal interest in
Alice. He included both of them in The Female Poets of
America, saying of Alice, "We have perhaps no other
author, so young, in whom the poetical faculty is so
largely developed" (FP 372). He was less glowing about
Phoebe, but he did describe her poetry as written "with
vigor, and a hopeful and genial spirit" and complimented
her "many felicities of expression, particularly in her
later pieces" (FP 372). Meanwhile the letters between
Alice and Rufus became more and more personal. By January
Alice was telling Griswold how difficult it had been for
them to earn much with their writing; she confessed that
the National Era paid them only two dollars per article.
Griswold was unburdening himself to her about his
fluctuating health which caused Alice some concern. She
confided, "I have prayed, and shall not cease to pray that
restoration hang her medicine upon thy lips" (Jan. 26,
1849, MB).
166
Griswold was doing what he could to get Alice's
' poetry published. He began by canvassing his friend James
13
Fields:
I
Pray you, look into the Female Poets and
j read what is quoted then from Alice and Phebe
I Carey. Very remarkable girls they are. Just
see— Alice in particular— 'A Legend of St.
Mary's,' 'An Evening Tale,1 'Pictures of
Memory.' This prolegomena is significant— Yes
, all their poems are in my keeping, for
| publication, in a volume like one of
I Tennyson's. What will you give? I am
instructed— ten percent. Do not be hasty— the
matter is worth thinking of. (RWG to JTF,
[1849], CSmH)
Fields was not interested and neither was F. Gleason, a
Boston publisher to whom Griswold also applied. Gleason
wrote a curt response:
The poems of the Misses Cary have not
escaped my notice. If it had been otherwise
your endorsement of their merit would be
sufficient to render their communications or
contributions valuable, but I regret to say that
I have extended my list as far as I think
prudent at present having already nearly weekly
contributions at a great cost from Mrs. Osgood,
Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Stephens,
Benjamin, Roe— Arthur, Beingham etc. I may by
and by take the liberty to communicate with the
young ladies referred to through you. In the
mean time permit me to thank you for your
13. Griswold consistently misspelled Alice and Phoebe's
last name, probably confusing the spelling with that of
his publisher, Carey and Hart. After this reference the
spelling will be regularized. Griswold here also
misspells Phoebe's first name.
i
| politeness in addressing me upon this subject.
I (Feb. 7, 1849, MB)
I
i
1 Griswold was eventually able to get Moss and Brother
of Philadelphia to publish the Cary sisters' poems which
I
■ came out for the 1849 Christmas trade. Griswold wrote the
j preface but did not sign it, probably because his support
of the Carys was so well-known that it was better for the
public to think that the preface had been written by
! someone else. Griswold was acting as a sort of business
manager for the Carys, negotiating terms with the
’ magazines (P. Cary to RWG, Feb. 19, 1849, MH) and handling
the financial details of the publication of their
14
volume.
As yet, however, he had not actually met Alice and he
did not do so until two years after their correspondence
had begun. Griswold had a picture of Alice which showed
her to be a rather plain woman with a large face and
strong features. Alice felt that the picture was an
i accurate likeness and told her lover, "You must not, my
; dear Mr. Griswold, flatter yourself that I look any better
i than my daguerreotype" (March 25, 1850, MB). She further
: 14. The Boston Public Library has a receipt written in
j Griswold's hand accepting payment for some of the Carys'
I poetry. The receipt is dated May 20, 1850.
168
I described herself as being "five feet, two inches in
j height, not heavy, and not very thin, don't know how much
I weigh, have black eyes, and hair darkly brown, am a
brunette, and decidedly plain, having seen my twenty-ninth
|
; birthday" (March 25, 1850, MB). Alice had no picture of
i
; Griswold, though she had almost certainly seen his picture
i
■ on the frontispiece of The Female Poets of America. She
I
asked for a picture of her own and declared flirtatiously:
If you so disregard my humble request, I
shall lay upon you my positive commands, and I
hope they will not be slighted. Did I frighten
you by telling you that I intended to keep it as
did Desdemona the handkerchief— to kiss and talk
to. If so, I will promise only to look at
it— No, I won't promise any such thing! But you
must send it. (March 25, 1850, MB)
It was very important that Griswold send his picture
because for a time it appeared that Alice would never meet
him. She had hoped to go to New York in the summer of
1850, but would probably not be able to go before June.
Griswold was suffering from one of his bouts of illness
and depression and was contemplating a trip to Europe that
( summer by way of a cure. He told Alice in a letter that
. they seemed destined to never meet, and this grim
I prediction upset Alice profoundly and caused her to write
I
her feelings more openly to Griswold than she had ever
done before. She told him that if he went to Europe
169
before she came to New York, that she would not care to go
to New York at all. She confided in a March 25 letter:
I dare not say do not go abroad as you
propose, but if you heard the pleading of my
heart— No, no, what would that be to you?
"There is a wandering bark, bearing one from me
o'er the restless main." I have been trembling
ever since I wrote you last, lest you might not
reply to me at all, or if you did, in terms so
coolly civil as to be worse than silence. For I
knew and repented having written in a manner
which in woman is considered unallowable, and I
was glad the bell chanced to ring for tea just
as your letter was handed in so that the girls
left the parlor and I read it without their
seeing my agitation. You see how inconsistent I
am, for notwithstanding all my misgivings and
resolves, I am writing more freely than before.
Well, you must forgive me. I cannot help
telling those 1 like how dear they are to me.
No, that is not exactly what I mean— I cannot
help telling you. (March 25, 1850, MB)
Alice's fears were unnecessary. Griswold saw Europe
as a sort of escape valve; he generally made plans for the
Grand Tour whenever his illnesses or his marriage sent him
into a depression. When the Cary sisters came to New York
early in the summer Griswold was on hand to squire them
about the city. Griswold's interest in Alice renewed his
impatience at being a legally married man and he wrote to
Fields of Alice's visit:
Well— Alice Cary is in Boston: at the
Marlborough. Go and see her: and carry
Whipple, who is an appreciating Christian. I
affect her some: yea, mightily, "except these
bonds." Truly, brother Paul and I are
unfortunate— but God is great, and it will be
170
well at last James [meaning in death]. (Aug.
12, 1850, CSmH)
' The sisters continued their Eastern visit by
I proceeding to Boston where Griswold had arranged for them
i
j to meet some of his literary friends. Whittier wanted to
i
i meet them (Passages 266) and Fields and Whittier visited
the Carys at the Marlborough (RWG to Fields, Aug. 12,
| 1850, CSmH). Fields expressed his approval of the Carys,
i attributing their fine qualities to Griswold's influence
| over them. He said the "girls" belonged "to the right
i school, modest & talented. Sojourning in New York so many
i weeks in yr. company has given them then two qualities!"
I
(Fields to RWG, Aug. 14, 1850, MH).
The Cary sisters returned home at the end of the
summer, but the trip had convinced them that they were
wasting their talent in Ohio. Clearly, in order to
succeed a poet must live in New York. Alice went back to
New York within a few months in order to prepare a place
i
for Phoebe and another sister who would join them. Alice
first took rooms at the New York Hotel, where Griswold
resided, and for a time their attachment was as strong as
j ever. "My dear Mr. Griswold" became "My dearest Wilmot"
and even after Alice rented Greeley's house, the two saw
each other often, resulting in some jealousy among
171
Griswold's other protegees (Gallagher to RWG, May 4, 1852,
15
MB). Griswold continued to promote Alice's work, and
she was able to support herself and her sisters.
But Griswold was not going to marry her. For a time
he was seriously tempted, but he had found a woman with
more to offer. He filed for divorce from Charlotte in
March 1852 with the intention of marrying Harriet
McCrillis, a spinster from a socially prominent family in
Bangor, Maine. Alice found the news devastating, but her
admiration of Griswold was not diminished. She adjusted
to the change in their relationship and maintained close
ties to him, though he could be only "Dr. Griswold" to her
in future. To Griswold's credit he did as much to advance
Alice Cary's reputation after his third marriage as he had
done in the thick of their courtship, but his support of
her thereafter was always tinged with feelings of guilt.
15. See also Elizabeth Oakes Smith's letter to Sarah Helen
Whitman, John Hay Library, n.p., n.d.
172
Chapter 4
Choosing the Poems
In the summer of 1848 Griswold was selecting not only
the poets that he wished to include in The Female Poets of
America, but also the poems that would represent each
poet. Poetry selection for an anthology is always a
tricky piece of business. The anthologist wishes to
please the public with his selections so as to boost
sales; he wishes to please his editorial peers so as to
feel that his work is of high quality. Not least of all
he wishes to please the poets themselves. It would be
easy enough to insult a poet by including too few
selections or the wrong selections in the volume.
Griswold was sensitive to the fact that the way he edited
the volume would have repercussions among the poets and he
called on his friend Fields early in the selection process
for aid and advice, saying he was "anxious to do justice
to all who have written anything which entitled them to a
173
place in such a collection" (RWG to Fields, [July 20]
[1848], CSmH).
Griswold wanted to make the book about equal in
length to The Poets and Poetry of America, perhaps as a
kind of companion volume, and as a result he needed to
choose a tremendous number of poems. Ninety-four poets
would be included, and since the volume was intended to
run about four hundred pages, each poet would have an
average of about four pages, though, of course, the
well-known poets would get more space than that and the
newcomers considerably less. Griswold planned the book
with double columns, which meant that a larger number of
poems could be included. To complicate matters, the poems
published in the 1840's were generally short since they
were so often originally intended for the newspapers or
periodicals, and the result was that most poets could
expect to have ten or more of their poems included. For
the well-published poet there was little difficulty in
finding material to include, but Griswold would have to
look over many sources to really see the body of the
poet's work. In fact, Griswold did not attempt to look
over many sources for the established poets, preferring to
publish poems provided by the poets themselves. It was
easier to make selections for the fledgling poet because
174
there were fewer poems to select from, but it was more
difficult to obtain the poems that were available for
them, though, here again, Griswold often relied on the
poems provided by the poets themselves for inclusion.
Griswold's job was made easier by the fact that so
many literary resources were available to him. He had
served on the editorial staff of Graham1s, The
Knickerbocker, and Greeley's New-Yorker and kept a
collection of these publications in his personal library
for easy reference. He also kept an almost complete set
°f The New York Mirror and The North American Review, two
other major sources for poetry published in the 1840's.
He maintained close friendships with most of the important
editors of these newspapers and literary periodicals. He
had an extensive collection of American books from which
to draw both poems and literary source material. He also
knew many of the women themselves and gained access to
their poetry through these personal friendships. By using
all of these sources he was able to compile the volume in
about six months.
Even with these excellent resources near at hand
Griswold made substantial use of his earlier anthologies.
The Poets and Poetry of America and Gems from American
I Female Poets, when choosing poetry for this new volume.
i
<
It is interesting to note that Griswold did not rely
I
■ heavily on any of the general poetry anthologies as he had
I
1 when compiling The Poets and Poetry of America and Gems
from American Female Poets. The poems in The Female Poets
, of America that had appeared in the anthologies by
Cheever, Keese, Kettell, and Bryant had almost invariably
i
been included in The Poets and Poetry of America as well.
In other words, Griswold preferred in The Female Poets to
rely on his own earlier selections from the general
' anthologies, rather than go back to see if he had missed
I any other good poems in Cheever or Kettell. It was a
pattern in Griswold's work generally to rely on his own
early research rather than scour available sources
published after his Poets and Poetry came out. The Poets
and Poetry of America was unquestionably Griswold's best
researched book, and after it was published he made a sort
of cottage industry of compiling anthologies based on the
research for this first anthology.
i
Griswold used The Poets and Poetry of America as the
| basis of selection for two of the major poets in The
I
Female Poets of America, Lydia Sigourney and Hannah
Gould. Griswold included nineteen poems by Sigourney in
The Female Poets of America, making it one of the larger
176
! selections in the book. Twelve of those poems had
| originally been included in The Poets and Poetry of
*
America. Two other poems were included that had earlier
been included in Gems from American Female Poets but not
in Poets and Poetry. That left only five poems that
Griswold chose from other available sources.
i
In the case of Hannah Gould, Griswold used only poems
, that had appeared first in The Poets and Poetry of
i
, America. Griswold was never very careful about getting
the permission of the poet to use certain poems in his
anthologies, despite the fact that he was a prime mover in
the attempt to get strict copyright laws passed in
America. In July 1848 he wrote to Fields that he was
nervous about the poems he would include for Hannah Gould
since he was not certain she would grant him permission to
16
use them. He told Fields,
Miss Gould I treat very well, but quote
sparingly, as I learn that she has an erroneous
impression of the effect of such quotations upon
the value of her copyrights. She would not
permit my rivals (Reed and Caroline May) to use
one of her pieces; and I have not written to
her, and shall not, as not one of the pieces I
use or wish to use can be protected by
copyright. I shall however observe as nearly as
I 16. Griswold consistently misspelled Thomas B. Read's name
l as "Reed." The spelling is hereafter regularized in the
i text.
177
may be Miss Gould's wishes in the matter.
{[July 20] [1848], CSmH)
Read was nervous enough about this business of Hannah
Gould's copyrights that he wrote to Griswold on July 27
with the intention of protecting himself from a possible
lawsuit. Griswold was in possession of a letter in which
Gould acknowledged the fact that she had given Griswold
permission to publish her poetry in his early anthologies,
but she expressed her regret at having done so. Griswold,
in turn, had given Read permission to use anything he
might fancy from Gems from American Female Poets. Read
was anxious to get a copy of the passage in Gould's letter
granting permission to publish her poems, which his lawyer
assured him would protect him from lawsuits if he
published only what Griswold had published in Gems from
American Female Poets (Read to RWG, July 27, 1848, PHi).
Griswold followed Read's method for avoiding
lawsuits. All fifteen of the poems in Hannah Gould's
section were taken from The Poets and Poetry of America.
None of her new poems were included, and Griswold was safe
from copyright infraction. It is hard to believe,
however, that the volume fulfilled Miss Gould's "wishes.”
Griswold also used Gems from American Female Poets as
the basis for several other poets. Three of Anna Maria
178
j Wells' six poems came from Gems, as did three out of four
j of Mary E. Brooks', and three of Anna Cora Mowatt's six.
: All four of Sarah Louisa P. Smith's poems were from Gems,
!
; as were both of Lydia Child's poems. In general, however,
! Griswold used The Poets and Poetry of America and Gems
from American Female Poets to fill in an occasional poem
• rather than as a basic source. Eighteen of the poets in
i
j The Female Poets of America, beyond those I have already
, mentioned, had between one and three poems included in
i
! their selections taken from either The Poets and Poetry of
America or Gems from American Female Poets. For most of
these poets that was a small percentage of the poems
included. Griswold made heavy use, however, of the
Appendix in The Poets and Poetry of America. The Appendix
consisted of poets Griswold considered second rate, and
normally a poet would be listed there with only one poem,
i Of fifteen poems included there, only one, Fanny Osgood's
i "Your Heart is a Music Box, Dearest," was not included in
I
I The Female Poets of America.
One anthology prior to Griswold’s also provided an
j easy source for poems. Sarah Josepha Hale's, The Lady's
i
Wreath, published in 1837 had included twelve American
poets all of whom were included in The Female Poets of
America. Twenty-two poems by ten authors included in The
Female Poets of America came from Hale's small volume.
I
Some of these poems had been included in the 1842 Poets
and Poetry of America, but most had not and it is clear
I
: that Griswold found Hale's earlier collection of women's
poetry very useful as he compiled his own.
The two most significant sources for poems in The
' Female Poets of America, however, were the individual
volumes of poetry published by some of the women and
suggestions made by the poets themselves. Before 1848 a
■ number of women had published individual volumes of
poetry, and a significant number of these had been
published since 1845. Griswold made a serious effort to
obtain and look over these volumes. Griswold was familiar
with some of these works because of his close relationship
to the author. For example, he was well acquainted with
Fanny Osgood's 1846 volume of poetry; he had offered
encouragement and advice while it was being edited, and a
copy, probably given to him by Fanny, remained in his
library. He had been the one to first encourage Amelia
Welby to publish a volume in 1845. Griswold owned a copy
■ of Elizabeth Ellet's 1835 collection of poetry since the
r
I
: two were close friends and worked in close proximity at
the New-York Historical Society Library during the winter
of 1847 (Bayless 143).
180
1 A number of these poetry collections were found in
; Griswold's library at his death. He owned the 1836
edition of Elizabeth Margaret Chandler's poems, the 1839
volume by Eliza Follen, Cynthia Taggart's Poems of 1834,
and Julia H. Scott's Poems of 1843. He had two copies of
Sarah Louisa P. Smith's Poems (1829) in different
bindings. He owned not only Fanny Osgood's general poetry
collection (1846), but also her book, A Wreath of Wild
Flowers, in both the 1838 and 1842 editions. He had an
1 early volume of Maria Brooks', entitled Judith, Esther and
Other Poems (1820) as well as two copies of her Zophiel
(1834). In the summer of 1848 the husband of Estelle
Lewis sent Griswold a copy of his wife's most recent book,
A Child of the Sea, and made him acquainted with her 1844
volume, Records of the Heart (S. Lewis to RWG, Nov. 2,
1846, MB). He owned copies of poetry collections by the
"Two Sisters of the West," Catherine Warfield and Eleanor
Lee, both The Wife of Leon (1844) and The India Chamber
and Other Poems (1846). He owned volumes by some of the
early poets included in his anthology: Susanna Rowson,
i
Phyllis Wheatley, and Mercy Warren. This is just a sample
( of the poetry collections in Griswold's library.
i
j These were books owned by Griswold in 1857. Some of
j them may, of course, have been added to his library after
i
181
! 1848 when The Female Poets of America was compiled.
■ Griswold also owned collections of women's poetry with
I publication dates later than 1848. It is difficult to
know for certain what books were in his personal library
at the time he chose the poems for The Female Poets of
America. It is, however, possible to see which of these
volumes Griswold was likely to have used in choosing
poetry for his volume. In a number of cases it is
)
possible to compare the contents pages of The Female Poets
of America with a particular collection of poetry and
establish that collection as Griswold's likely source.
The poetry collections that Griswold seemed to use
most heavily were the complete collections that had been
published close to the time that The Female Poets of
America was compiled. For example, Ann Lynch published a
complete collection of her poetry in 1848. Though
Griswold had never published her work in any of his
earlier anthologies he gave her a large space in The
j Female Poets of America including twenty-seven of her
1 poems, all but one of which had been included in her
I collected poems. Griswold had included Mary E. Hewitt in
Gems from American Female Poets with only one poem, but
j after the 1845 publication of her The Songs of Our Land
| and Other Poems Griswold included sixteen of her poems in
182
The Female Poets of America. Only four of those poems
were not found in her collection. Griswold's library
i
l included two recent volumes by Catharine Warfield and
| Eleanor Lee, sisters who wrote poetry jointly. Eight of
; their nine selections came from those volumes, The Wife of
i
1 Leon and Other Poems (1844) and The India Chamber and
Other Poems (1846). Amelia Welby’s 1845 Poems by Amelia
provided all twelve of the selections for The Female Poets
^ _ --
i SlL America. All but one of the selections for Estelle
: Lewis came from either Records of the Heart or The
Children of the Sea.
Caroline Gilman was one of the poets to have a volume
; of poetry published in the summer of 1848 while The Female
1 Poets of America was being compiled, and Griswold wrote to
Fields late in the year for help in getting a copy of her
book:
j
My Female Poets is nearly finished. But I
beg you to get a copy of Mrs. Gilman's new book
from your neighbors and send me by first
j opportunity. I was promised, I think by Munroe
! himself, a copy in sheets, as soon as it should
be finished. ([1848], CSmH)
i
| Griswold probably received the book as a copy of it
i
remained in his library, and his inclusions for Caroline
t
Gilman give evidence of his having seen the collection.
183
| Six of her seven poems came from this volume, which was
I
, entitled Verses of a Lifetime.
Griswold was interested in publishing some poems by
, Lucy Hooper, one of several child prodigies of which
; Griswold was so fond. Apparently he wrote to his friend,
)
James Freeman Clarke for help in obtaining some of
Hooper's poems, for in an undated letter Clarke responded,
"I will endeavor to obtain the permission of Mrs. Hooper's
family to furnish you with some of her poems. But
hitherto they have objected very decidedly to their being
, printed" (Clarke to RWG, n.d., MB). What neither Clarke
nor Griswold seemed to have realized was that in fact an
edition of Hooper's poems was in the works. The
collection appeared in the summer and was reviewed in the
August 1848 issue of The Knickerbocker. Whether or not
Griswold proceeded to ask the Hooper's for permission to
publish Lucy's poems, twelve of the fourteen poems
included in The Female Poets of America came from this
1848 edition.
! In the case of Sarah Edgarton Mayo it seems likely
that Griswold saw a copy of her collected poems even
though her book had an 1849 publication date. Mayo died
on July 9, 1848 and her poems were then collected for
184
I publication. Sarah Mayo's editors would have been working
i
on the volume at the same time Griswold was working on his
and he may have asked to see the proof sheets for her
volume before it went to press. At any rate, six of the
seven selections for Mayo in The Female Poets of America
were also included in her collected poems. Three of those
poems could also have been found in various issues of The
Rose of Sharon, a Universalist paper which Mayo edited and
: which Griswold was aware of, since he mentioned it in
Mayo's biographical headnote. It is also possible that he
found the other poems in the various periodicals to which
Mayo contributed.
Some of the women had published volumes in the late
1830's and early 1840's and Griswold used these
collections quite heavily also. All five of the poems for
Elizabeth Margaret Chandler came from her 1836 The
Poetical Works of Miss Chandler. a volume that Griswold
had in his library. Two of these five poems had also
, appeared in Gems. The five poems for Maria James all came
from her Wales and Other Poems published in 1839. Eliza
Pollen's 1839 collections provided her three poems; Mary
i
Noel Meigs's Poems by Mary Noel McDonald (1844) provided
all three of hers. Julia H. Scott's 1843 collection
provided two of three poems.
185
Sometimes Griswold used early poetry even when more
recent selections were possible. Griswold had written to
one poet, Louisa Hall, soliciting information for the
biographical headnote and asking for selections of
poetry. She responded by sending some copies of poems
(Louisa J. Hall to RWG, July 4, 1848, PHi) which Griswold
never used. Instead he relied on a long poem of Hall's
which she had published in 1838 entitled, Miriam: A
Dramatic Poem. Griswold had used a substantial selection
from this long poem in The Poets and Poetry of America and
he used virtually the same selection for The Female Poets
of America.
Griswold depended on individual volumes in his
library when it came to selecting poems for the poets in
his volume who had already died. Three of the four poems
that he included for Mercy Warren could be found in her
collected works. Her 1784 volume. Poems on Various
Subject Religious and Moral had been republished in 1834
under the title, Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, a
Native African and a Slave. The 1834 title reflected the
nation's growing interest in the slave question. Griswold
was interested in her particularly for her race and
referred to her in the biographical headnote as a
"remarkable phenomenon" (FP 30). He owned a second
186
edition of this 1834 collection and from it took all three
of the poems for The Female Poets of America.
In a few cases Griswold used the individual volumes
sparingly. He took only five of eighteen poems from
Elizabeth Ellet's 1835 collection of poetry. In the case
of Fanny Osgood he took only nine of thirty-nine poems
from her 1846 collection. In both cases Griswold's light
use of their extant collections can be explained by his
close relationship to these poets. Griswold had continual
contact with Elizabeth Ellet during the time he was
compiling The Female Poets of America, and it is very
likely that she supplied him with more recent poetry than
he could get from her 1835 volume. Griswold's
relationship with Fanny Osgood was even more intimate.
More importantly, during this period Griswold was helping
Osgood to bring her poems together in a more comprehensive
collected works, which was eventually published in 1849.
Thus he had continual exposure to her work as he compiled
his anthology.
Griswold's industry in looking over these volumes of
collected poetry by the women included in The Female Poets
of America is one of the greatest strengths of his book,
though it certainly gave a powerful advantage to those who
! had published recent volumes.
i
Griswold also used a second important method for
, getting information about the poets. It is apparent from
the correspondence in the Griswold Collection at the
Boston Public Library and from scattered letters to
Griswold at other libraries that he wrote letters to women
included in the anthology asking for biographical
information that could be used in composing the headnotes
and samples of poetry that they might wish to have
included. Prom the correspondence that is available in
these sources, however, it seems certain that Griswold did
! not write to all of the women included in the book, and
probably wrote to only a significant fraction, those whose
importance may have warranted it or whose addresses he
could obtain.
Griswold wrote to these poets while he was still
working on the preliminary list of poets for the work.
‘ The preliminary list constituted about half the poets who
i were finally included and was sent to Fields in
} mid-summer. In the same letter he complained that Anna
Maria Wells was "the only person who declined to answer my
letter" ([July 20] [1848], CSmH), indicating that he had
j written at most only to the women included in the
!
; preliminary list. In fact, it is clear that he had not
even written to all of the women in the preliminary list,
! since he questioned Fields in the letter about one of the
! women included on the list, Katherine A. Ware, saying:
"Do you know where I can address the home of Mrs. K. A.
Ware? or, can I get a copy of the London volume published
by that woman?" ([July 20] [1848], CSmH).
Griswold got his information for The Female Poets of
America only partially from the poets themselves. He also
enlisted the aid of his friends in gathering information.
When Griswold wrote to Fields late in 1848 asking for a
copy of Caroline Gilman's new book, he remarked, "Mrs.
Gilman is the only author not given out" ([1848], CSmH).
For Griswold an author was "given out" when he had either
written to the author himself or asked one of his literary
friends, almost invariably male, to send him information
on that author. The difficulty of obtaining addresses,
especially for some of the more obscure poets (of whom
there were many in Griswold's anthology), and Griswold's
i
shortage of time made him depend heavily on information
| obtained by others.
i
189
! At least a dozen responses to Griswold's letter
i
: asking for poetry samples and biographical information
> still exist. This seems a very small number considering
; the fact that ninety-four women were finally included in
*
the work and that so much of Griswold's correspondence
still remains. It therefore seems unlikely that he wrote
; to a large percentage of the women included in The Female
r
Poets of America, even to obtain permission to publish
i their poetry. The responses that we do have, however,
tell a great deal about how Griswold related to the women
he included in his book, and how they related to him.
In general, a women poet in the nineteenth century
tried to avoid the appearance of putting herself forward
or advancing her career by self-promotion. In answering
Griswold's letter, however, a poet would be forced to list
her accomplishments and send her best poetry without
seeming too self-seeking. Louisa Kail's response was
typical of the kind of letter Griswold frequently received
from the women he canvassed:
Sir—
I I should have answered your kind letter
I immediately but it came to me just as I was
j going to Newport for my health. I should have
been sorry to treat it with seeming neglect,
even if its contents had been less flattering.
190
About a month ago I received a similar
application from a lady, an entire stranger to
me, Miss Caroline May of New York; who proposed
to edit a volume of "Specimens from American
Female poets, with Biographical Sketches.'1 She
stated that she was in haste to go to press, and
I complied with her request. As something had
already appeared in print, without my previous
knowledge, containing several little errors, and
I had consequently received letters addressed to
Mrs. Elizabeth Hall, my husband thought it best
to draw up a short notice for her which will
probably appear. Perhaps if you had been aware
of this, you would hardly [have] considered me
worthy of a double introduction to the public,
and therefore, Sir, I shall not feel at all
slighted should you make no use of the
following. It is somewhat fuller than the
notice forwarded to Miss May. (July 4, 1848,
PHi)
Hall went on to include the biographical sketch and
poetry selections, and then made this comment in the
postscript:
My fugitive pieces, as they are fitly
called have been so numerous and scattered that
I hardly know where to find them. I have
written more, and as it appears to me, better in
prose than in poetry; but I send you some
specimens, such as they are. The "Cross and
Anchor" was literally scribbled when I was both
sick and hurried; and I doubt if anything in it
is worth your looking at, unless possibly the
two last pieces. Upon the "Baby's Complaint," I
fancy my literary reputation must chiefly rest!
(July 4, 1848, PHi)
Several features are notable in this letter. Louisa
Hall's language here is servile and intended to flatter
the well-known anthologist. She refers to Griswold as
"Sir." She tells him she would have responded to his
191
letter "immediately" under normal circumstances. She
believes the poems in "Cross and Anchor" are probably not
worth his looking it. And she assures him that since she
is being included in Caroline May's volume he may feel
that her inclusion in a second anthology will give her too
much prominence and that it is perfectly all right with
her if he decides to leave her out.
In fact, some things in the letter seem to be
included as a way of making sure she stays in Griswold's
anthology. Hall immediately introduces the subject of
Caroline May's competing volume and tells Griswold that
Miss May has already received the information Griswold
seeks, thus indicating to Griswold that another
anthologist has considered her worthy of a place. Hall
makes clear, however, that she considers May's anthology
less significant. She refers to May as "an entire
stranger to me," that is, an unknown person in literary
society. She also points out that she is sending Griswold
a biographical sketch "somewhat fuller than the notice
forwarded to Miss May," thus indicating his superior
claim.
Hall also refers to an early printing of her work in
which not only had the anthologist neglected to ask her
192
permission to print her poetry, he had also misnamed her,
| calling her "Elizabeth" Hall rather than Louisa. In fact,
Griswold had been that anthologist in Gems from American
Female Poets. It seems unlikely that Hall remembered that
Griswold was the culprit and is using this method to ask
; for reparations in the new volume. It is more likely that
; she has genuinely forgotten his early mistake and is
attempting to point out that she has been anthologized
before and that if she is to be anthologized again it
‘ should be without the "several little errors" of the first
time. In fact, Hall need not have worried, since Griswold
used none of the poems she had enclosed, preferring to
stick with the excerpts of her major work Miriam which he
had included in The Poets and Poetry of America.
It is significant that Hall did not write her own
biography. Her husband had prepared a biography in case
it should be needed. Several of the poets in The Female
Poets of America felt uncomfortable conducting their own
business as poets and therefore their husbands wrote to
editors and anthologists and did what they could to
i
promote their wife's work. The husband of Jane Lewers
j Gray, for example, responded to Griswold's letter on
j behalf of his wife who was mourning for a son who had
recently died. Griswold had suggested certain poems he
193
! was thinking of including in The Female Poets of America
j and Reverend Gray conveyed his wife’s reaction:
Mrs. Gray directs me to say that you are at
liberty of use in your forth-coming work the
poems to which you make allusion in your
letter. She would also add the one herein
contained, if it be not too much hackneyed.
(July 5, 1848, MB)
The poem which the Reverend Gray transcribed for his wife
I
; was "Morn: In Imitation of ’Night,' by Montgomery."
Griswold included the poem in his anthology, along with
two other selections of his own. One of those poems was
"Sabbath Reminiscences," which Griswold had probably
suggested to Reverend Gray as a possible inclusion. Gray
had sent Griswold background information on that poem in
response to a request from Griswold (July 5, 1848, MB).
When a poet mentioned her preference for a particular
poem Griswold was very apt to include it in his
anthology. In this way he satisfied the poet, and did not
risk his own choice. For example, Estelle Lewis sent
Griswold a copy of her The Child of the Sea and Other
Poems with her recommendations, saying, "I think you will
; like 'Una,' 'The Bard,' and some of the passages which I
have marked in 'the Child' and 'The Broken Heart'" (Nov.
i
! 13, 1848, PHi). Griswold did not include "The Bard," but
I he did publish "Una," an extract from "Isabelle, or the
194
Broken Heart," and reviewed The Child of the Sea and Other
Poems. When the husband of Elizabeth Kinney responded to
Griswold he mentioned only one of his wife's poems
specifically, "The Spirit of Song," which Kinney felt
appropriately described his wife's feelings about poetry.
Griswold published it.
Some poets seemed to feel quite shy about giving
Griswold too much advice about what to include in his
anthology. However, the more detailed the instructions
Griswold received the more likely he was to follow them.
For example, Sarah Helen Whitman responded at length to
Griswold's letter asking for advice and told him which of
her poems she liked better than others. She was concerned
about the title she had given her "David" poem and she
asked Griswold if he preferred a revised title. Whitman
went on to suggest specific poems and gave Griswold the
sources where he could find them:
There is a poem of mine in the Union
Magazine for August 1847 entitled the Golden
Ball a Fairy Ballad; another belonging to the
same series, written by my sister and myself,
will appear in the ensuing number of the Union.
If you like these poems and have room for them
you can take them from the printed copies in the
magazine, although I fear they would be too long
for your selection. I should like exceedingly
to have The Sleeping Beauty published in a work
that would introduce it to English readers. I
cannot but think it would find favour with those
who have so long loved these beautiful legends.
: My Sister and myself have written another Ballad
entitled Cinderella. I think this will be
perhaps more popular than either of the others.
Mr. Charles Barnett a bookseller of our city
thinks of asking the Harpers to get them out
with appropriate engravings as a gift-book for
; Christmas and proposed to take a sufficient
i number of copies to pay for the publication.
In a postscript Whitman added: "Among the poems which I
i send you I like the lines to the Past, Summer's Invitation
1 to the Little Orphan, How softly come the Summer Wind, and
The Song of Spring, perhaps because with the exception of
, the Past they are all of recent date." She also included
a transcription of "Stanzas with a Bridal Ring" (n.d.,
MB) .
Griswold followed Whitman's suggestion for the
"David" poem title and he included seven of the nine poems
Whitman mentioned in her letter: "The Lost Church,"
"David," "The Sleeping Beauty," "Summer's Invitation to
the little Orphan," "How Softly Comes the Summer Wind,"
"Stanzas with a Bridal Ring," and "The Past."
!
Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey1s. responded
similarly to Griswold's request for information, but in
| her case he was not so obliging in following her
}
instructions. She sent him a long letter discussing her
work and telling him what was appropriate material for her
biographical sketch. She sent him a copy of "Hudson
I
I
196
River" and "The Song of the Flower Angels" from her long
poem Felicia, the beginning of the second Canto of "The
Rime of Life," and a copy of a poetry book for children.
The Child1s Song Book. Griswold heeded only the
suggestions concerning the biographical sketch. None of
the poems Hale suggested were included and he mentioned
The Child1s Song Book only as one of "several small books
for children" she had published. Instead he focused on
Hale's Three Hours, or the Vigil of Love published in 1848
upon which he said "must rest her best literary
reputation" (FP 58).
There are several possible reasons why Griswold
ignored Hale's wishes in The Female Poets of America. For
one thing, Hale's work was widely available both in
Godey1s Lady1s Book, her 1837 gift book of women's poetry,
and in her own volumes of poetry. It was not necessary
for Griswold to depend on the poet to make selections and
send him copies of her work. Two of the six poems
Griswold included for her had been published in Hale's
gift book of women's poetry. Griswold found another,
ready-made, source for Hale's poems. Four of Hale's
selections included in The Female Poets of America had
been published in both Read's and May's volumes before his
own went to press.
197
! For some of the poets who responded to Griswold's
: letter it is difficult to tell how carefully Griswold
, followed their suggestions. Often a poet did not list in
her letter the titles of the poems she was sending. The
poems themselves can almost never be found with the
i letters now, since Griswold would have taken them out to
| include in his manuscript. Yet it is still possible to
ascertain in some cases which poems Griswold selected
himself for the volume and which were suggested by their
| author. For example, Rebecca S. Nichols was ill when she
received Griswold's request for information, but she
replied through her friend, Mary B. Williams, who told
Griswold:
I am instructed by Mrs. Nichols to say that
inability to procure sooner the accompanying
articles must plead her excuse for the delay in
replying to your communication. Are you aware
that T. B. Read of Philadelphia is engaged upon
a work precisely similar to the one you
contemplate publishing? E. H. Butler & Co. are
his publishers.
Enclosed are a number of poems not included
in the volume you mentioned, from which Mrs.
Nichols wishes you to select those most worthy
of your forthcoming volume. She will take it as
a favor if you will return those of which you
make no use, as she has no second copy. (March
27, h.y., MB)
The volume of Mrs. Nichols' that Griswold mentioned
was almost certainly Bernice, or the Curse of Minna and
198
j Other Poems. Griswold prominently featured this volume in
j 'Nichols' biographical sketch and he took from it three of
| the nine poems he published. The six remaining poems of
Nichols' may all be poems that she sent Griswold since she
, only sent poems "not in the volume you mentioned." These
: six poems are not in any of Griswold's earlier anthologies
nor in any of the general anthologies preceding his. Mrs.
| Nichols' letter makes clear that she knows of Read's
I competing volume, probably because he has made a similar
i
I
j request for information. In fact, three of the six poems
not in Bernice were also published in Read, indicating
; that she may have sent Read some of the same poems she
sent Griswold.
Some of the letters Griswold received from the women
he was canvassing probably enhanced their position in the
anthology. Alice Cary's response so warmed Griswold's
heart that he began a relationship with her that nearly
i culminated in marriage. She began her letter:
j
It gives me great pleasure to comply with
the request of your very obliging letter by
placing at your disposal the poems in your
! possession [Griswold had probably clipped them
j from Western newspapers where Alice was
| published]. I have also taken the liberty of
sending you some other specimens, which, to
quote Willis, I prefer to remember as my own.
Not that I wish to press for the admission of a
larger number, or dictate to your better
judgment, but that you may have an ampler field
199
from which to select. Should you elsewhere meet
with anything from either of our pens in time to
serve you, it will be at your disposal.
(Passages 239)
Alice's inclusion of extra poems made further research
unnecessary for Griswold, and Alice had nineteen poems
included in The Female Poets of America. a very large
-~s
; number for a virtually unheard-of poet. Her sister Phoebe
also benefitted from Alice's letter; though Griswold never
appreciated her poetry he published fifteen of her poems.
In some cases the responses to Griswold's letter
indicate hostility toward him and in these cases the poet
, was almost invariably slighted in the work. Griswold's
; relationship with Elizabeth Ellet which had once been
I close, deteriorated rapidly in the summer of 1848 after
Ellet published her Women of the Revolution without any
acknowledgment of Griswold's advice and aid in the project
(Bayless 144). Her letter reflects her hostility toward
Griswold. In fact, Ellet's response was not even a
letter, but a very formal biographical sketch written in
the third person. Realizing that this was exactly the
sort of sketch Griswold would also be writing of her, she
warned him at the beginning of the sketch that this was a
notice "which the Editor of 'The Poets' will of course put
into his own language" ([1848}, MB, emphasis Ellet's).
200
She listed her work with extensive description, but made
the mistake of dwelling more on her prose writing and
plays, which in fact constituted most of her work, than
her poetry. She did not suggest any specific poems to
include, and thus Griswold reprinted some poems he already
had available. He included some poems from The Poets and
Poetry of America, some from her 1835 collected poems, and
some from Caroline May's volume. Eighteen of Ellet's
poems were included, which was a substantial selection,
but he slighted her in the biographical sketch, a move
that had significant ramifications for their later
relationship.
Another poet who responded to Griswold's letter by
writing to him in the third person was Griswold's
competitor Caroline May. Clearly, she felt awkward being
included in a rival anthology, especially since Griswold
had given her some help in finding materials she needed
for her own volume. Her letter reflects both a sense of
her obligation to Griswold and her desire to remain
independent of him:
Miss Caroline May's compliments to Mr.
Griswold, and sends in compliance with his
request, a few of her rhymes, for his book. As
she cannot, nor would not on any account, be
considered a literary lady (although guilty of
rhyming now and then) she hopes she will not be
doomed to be sketched biographically! If any
201
facts as to native place etc. are necessary, she
will give them on being asked by Mr. Griswold.
The sonnets she has sent because they have been
much praised by a friend of some literary
distinction, but Mr. Griswold need not feel
condemned to put any of them in, without it
pleases himself to do so. Those pieces that are
not used, will Mr. Griswold return? Will he
also oblige Miss May by sending him the name of
the "Agrigentum" poetess, he mentioned the other
day; and tell her where she can find her poems?
(June 28, 1848, PHi, emphasis May's)
Griswold printed five sonnets, probably the ones May
<
1 sent him, as well as five other poems. It is likely that
May sent him all, or nearly all, of these poems since
Griswold remarked in the sketch for May that with the
exception of one, the poems were being printed for the
first time (FP 346). Since May had not provided him with
any biography, however, her sketch in The Female Poets of
America was only one small paragraph long.
One poet wrote a response to Griswold's letter of the
sort which made his blood run cold. Griswold liked the
feeling that he could choose whatever poems struck his
fancy and include them in his book. He responded best to
poets who sent him "suggestions" but encouraged him to
publish whatever he liked. He grew nervous when poets
( were too interested in having specific poems published and
[
when they were concerned about how Griswold's treatment of
i
, them in his book would affect their professional
202
reputation. It was for this reason that he had played it
: safe with Hannah Gould by publishing only what had already
' been included in The Poets and Poetry of America.
| On August 6 Griswold received a response from
! Elizabeth Bogart. He had previously published her "He
I Came too Late" in three of his compilations, The Poets and
Poetry of America, Gems from American Female Poets, and a
| gift book he had compiled entitled The Poetry of Love. He
i
! and Bogart were well acquainted. He met her frequently at
Miss Lynch's parties. Yet she wrote to him in some
annoyance:
My friend Dr. Francis called on me a few
days since to enquire if I had furnished you
with any of my poems for your forth-coming
volume. My answer was, of course, that you had
; made an application to me on the subject. I
have understood from others, however, that you
had said it was your intention to put something
of mine in your book. If this be true, permit
me to say that I should consider myself as
unfairly treated, should you pick up any of my
floating pieces, written for the papers, and
publish them in a more enduring form, without
giving me first the opportunity of revising and
I correcting them. It is a matter of indifference
to me whether I am included in your collection
of poets, or not— but, if i am, I should
certainly claim the privilege, granted I presume
to others, of having some choice in the
j selection of articles; as it is my own
reputation as a writer which would be
j concerned. You will please understand. Sir,
that I am not asking an introduction into your
book; but merely the question whether you have
taken my name, without any consultation with me,
as to the poems you design to attach to it. You
203
will oblige me by giving an answer." (Aug. 6,
i n.y., PHi)
1 No answer to this letter exists, but Griswold's treatment
of Bogart in The Female Poets of America reflects his
nervousness in dealing with her. He included only four of
her poems, including his old favorite "He Came too Late,"
and wrote a short, uncomplimentary biographical sketch of
her.
i
I
Griswold also received help in choosing poems from
some of his male colleagues. They collected biographical
information; from time to time they also sent along poems
they liked. Griswold had made it a practice from his
first anthology The Poets and Poetry of America to enlist
the aid of his friends in gathering poems and biographical
information, as well as listening to their criticism and
17
praise. Much of this aid was done in a very casual way,
through informal discussions at Mrs. Lynch's or in
Griswold's office. For example, Charles Frederick Briggs
of the New York Mirror sent a note off to Griswold
i
saying: "I will come up and see you tomorrow afternoon
I and bring you an original poem of Maria Lowell's for your
! volume, and some shorter ones; and tell you about them"
17. See letters from F. W. Thomas to RWG about Amelia
Welby, June 8, 1841; Dec. 15, 1841; Jan. 17, 1842, MB.
204
(n.d., MB). Clearly Griswold had asked Briggs for aid on
this poet whom he did not personally know. Griswold
included only four poems by the seldom-published Lowell,
possibly all from Briggs. Another helpful friend was
William D. Gallagher, the anthologist of Western poets,
who sent Griswold poems by the "Two Sisters of the West,"
Catherine Warfield and Eleanor Lee, as well as some poems
by Sophia Oliver (Gallagher to RWG, Oct. 6, 1848, PHi).
In some cases Griswold's requests for aid were more
formal. Griswold wrote to Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham,
a theologian from Boston, requesting help on Eliza
Townsend, a Boston poet. Frothingham responded at length:
I received your letter yesterday morning,
asking for some further information than you
already possess respecting the poetical writings
of Miss Eliza Townsend; I made no delay in
calling to see her. She told me that she had
written no verses of late years, but referred me
to some pieces of hers published in the Port
Folio a great while ago. I suppose I shall
fulfill your request, so far as it is my power
to do it, by directing your attention to the
articles she named.
One was "The Rhapsody," printed in the
P[ort] F[olio] Vol. 7 March No. of 1812.
Another was "Lines on the Fire at Richmond,
Va." P. Folio, Vol. 8. p. 206
In a note that I have received from her
this morning she mentions another contribution
to the same magazine in 1810, "Commemorative of
Charles Brockden Brown." She is aware of an
objection that may be made to her "stanzas," for
205
speaking of that celebrated novelist as a poet,
which in strictness he was not, having never
printed I believe any verse. But she considers,
that, in spirit and essentially, he was a bard.
For my own part, I do not remember even to
have seen either of these pieces. But when I
was a youth in college she published two in the
7th vol. of the Monthly Anthology that were
considerably spoken of. One was an "Ode to
Time," p. 180. The other, "Another Castle on
the Air," p. 319. (June 27, 1848, MB).
Griswold included the "Ode to Time" under the title
| "An Occasional Ode, written in June, 1809" as well as
"Another Castle on the Air." He also included an extract
of the "Commemorative of Charles Brockden Brown" and a
poem not mentioned in the letter, "To Robert Southey."
, The fifth poem Griswold included was one he had originally
: seen in Bryant’s anthology and had himself included in The
Poets and Poetry of America and Gems from American Female
Poets, "The Incomprehensibility of God."
James Fields was a continual source of information
and advice on the book. When he came across something he
| thought Griswold might find useful, he sent it on. Fields
was a native of New Hampshire and sent Griswold a copy of
i The New Hampshire Book which included work by a number of
I
j women poets. Griswold responded to Fields' gift by
i
| eliciting Field's help in choosing poets from it. He told
j Fields:
Of New Hampshire women, I find in the N. H.
Book (the treasured copy that you gave to me)
Mrs. Daniels, and I think one more, who deserve
places. The N.H.B. is not by me now, but your
advice will govern me in regard to any who are
your friends, and I shall be glad if you will
send me any sketches or poems of the "granite"
poetesses or those of the Bay State. ([July 20]
[1848], CSmH)
In mid-August Fields brought Susan Barnes' poetry to
! Griswold's attention saying,
i
?
| I have some beautiful poems by me by Mrs.
Barnes of New-Hampshire which I will send you if
it is not too late for their insertion. They
are No. 1, full of passionate feeling and
! eminently worthy of a place. Let me hear from
j you at once and I will forward immediately if it
I is yet in season. (Aug. 15, 1848, MB)
Fields' suggestion was "in season" and Griswold included
Barnes' poem "The Army of the Cross." However, Griswold
: did not rely much on the poems included in The New
i
Hampshire Book for his Female Poets of America. He
included only one other poem from it: . Sarah J. Hale's
"The Light of Home," a poem which was available to him
from several different sources. He did find The New
i
1 Hampshire Book useful as a source of poets, however, and
i
i included several New Hampshire bards from it, along with
| poems taken from other sources.
Another of Griswold's important resources for poems
was, of course, the periodicals. Since he kept some of
207
the important literary journals and newspapers in his
library, it seems likely that he used them as sources for
some of the poetry he included in The Female Poets of
America. He did not, however, use them as widely as he
might have. He seems to have used them as an additional
source of poems, rather than as a major source. For a few
poets, however, Griswold's use of the periodicals was
significant. For example, Elizabeth Kinney, who was a
major contributor to Graham1s, found that six of her
eleven selections had been published in Graham * s in 1848,
some just before The Female Poets of America was
published. Other contributors to Graham1s like Elizabeth
Eames, Fanny Osgood, and Mary Lockhart Lawson, also found
some of their poems from Graham's included in the volume.
In the biographical headnotes Griswold frequently
mentioned the periodicals in which the poet published,
indicating his familiarity with these sources for his
volume. For example, he spoke of Susan Pindar publishing
in The Knickerbocker, the Fuller sisters and Anne H.
Phillips publishing in The Home Journal. and Jane T.
Worthington and Susan Archer Talley publishing mostly in
The Southern Literary Messenger.
208
In comparing Griswold's anthology with those edited
by T. B. Read and Caroline May, it is impossible not to
notice how many of the same poems appeared in more than
one anthology. The volumes by Read and May were both
published several months before Griswold's, probably in
September or October 1848. Read's volume was published
first and then May's, but the first review of them was a
joint review published in the October 21 issue of The
Literary World. Griswold's volume came out about December
18 (Bayless 150). There was sufficient lag time for
Griswold to use poems from Read and May if he chose to do
so.
In fact, there was probably a great deal of borrowing
of both poetry and biographical information among these
three anthologists. It is clear that Gems from American
Female Poets and The Poets and Poetry of America were
useful sourcebooks for Read and May. Read had been given
permission to use poems from Gems (Read to RWG, July 27,
1848, PHi), and both Read and May were very familiar with
Griswold's early anthologies. By looking at publication
dates for a volume of poetry or an anthology it is easy to
see a possible pattern of borrowing, even when we cannot
209
be certain exactly how, or even whether, the borrowing
i
: took place.
j
I
Here is a typical example of how some poems may have
i
gotten into the anthologies by Read and May. Two of the
poems published for Elizabeth Ellet in The Female Poets of
i America were MSusquehannah" and "Sodus Bay."
i
; "Susquehannah" was originally published in Ellet's 1835
collection of poetry from which Griswold could have
( obtained it. He published it in his 1842 The Poets and
Poetry of America. The poem next appeared in Caroline
May's, The American Female Poets (1848). "Sodus Bay"
could also be found in Ellet's collected poems. Griswold
probably selected it from the collected poems, including
it in Gems from American Female Poets, then in The Poets
and Poetry of America. Finally, it showed up in May's
anthology.
Sometimes the borrowing from Griswold seems obvious.
i All three of Read's selections for Anna Cora Mowatt
1 appeared first in Griswold's Gems, which itself had only
' three selections. Other poems that Read likely borrowed
I
from Gems were Anna Maria Wells' "The Future," Eliza
Townsend's "The Incomprehensibility of God," Mary E.
Brooks' "Weep Not for the Dead," Anna Peyre Dinnies* "The
I 210
Wife," and Fanny Osgood's "Your Heart is a Music Box,
Dearest." Some poems that Caroline May probably borrowed
were Margaret St. Leon Loud's "Prayer for an Absent
Husband," Elizabeth Margaret Chandler's "The Devoted" and
"The Brandywine," and Elizabeth Bogart's "He Came too
Late" which appeared in three Griswold anthologies before
May's was published. Read and May both published dozens
of poems in their anthologies that had first appeared in
Griswold's.
Griswold seems to have been dependent on their work
as well. In the case of at least thirty-three poets
Griswold published poems that had never appeared in his
anthologies or any other major anthologies, but had been
published in Read or May. Sometimes the borrowing seems
obvious. For example, in the case of Sarah Josepha Hale,
Griswold included eight selections of poetry. Two of
these had been published in Hale's Ladies' Wreath; two
have unknown origins. Four were published in both Read
and May. Read, in fact, published only those four poems,
which were then probably lifted by May into her volume and
then by Griswold into his. When Griswold borrowed a
substantial number of poems like this he generally used
them as filler, providing an equal number of poems from
other sources. For example, of the nine poems selected
211
1 for Lydia Jane Peirson, three were published first in Read
I
) and two in May. Griswold provided the remaining four from
other sources, probably the periodicals. He seems to have
borrowed five poems from May for Elizabeth Ellet out of
eighteen; seven out of twenty-seven for Ann Lynch; two of
eleven for Caroline Sawyer. Read may have been the source
: for three poems by Ann Lynch, three of eight by "Edith
May," and three by Emily Judson.
t
Griswold's borrowing from Read and May is an
important weakness in his selection process for The Female
Poets of America, but it is probably not as significant a
weakness as his general readiness to accept whatever
poetry came his way and include it in his volume.
' < Griswold seems to have had very little stomach for
refusing the recommendations of his friends or even the
recommendations of the poets themselves. When poems were
sent to him from trusted colleagues he did not subject
them to the same scrutiny that he did when he himself was
doing the research. The great strength of Griswold's work
and the single element that made it superior to the
; volumes by Read and May is Griswold's reliance on the
< individual volumes of poetry by these women. More than
any other anthologist before him Griswold understood the
importance of seeing a poet's work in its entirety. When
i
212
faced with a deadline, however, he was too quick to
sacrifice careful research for completed copy.
The biographical sketches that preceded the poems
showed some of the same weaknesses and strengths of the
poetry selection process. Griswold often found as he
canvassed for biographical information that someone,
usually Caroline May, had been there ahead of him. Louisa
Hall was willing to send Griswold a notice "somewhat
fuller than the notice forwarded to Miss May" (July 4,
1848, PHi) because of Griswold's greater prestige, but for
the most part the poets found it easier to send off a copy
of what had been sent to another anthology. Worse yet,
they sometimes sent him straight to the rival anthologist
for the information. For example, Sarah Helen Whitman
responded to Griswold's letter in this way:
I am still too ill to write out for you the
details which you require for a brief memoir.
But if you will send to Miss Caroline May of New
York who is getting out a vol. of selections she
will perhaps let you have a notice written by a
a friend of mine which will furnish you with the
requisite data. ([18481, MB).
In fact, Whitman was not too ill to write a four-page,
closely written letter, giving specific advice as to which
poems she wished him to include. But it may have seemed
213
to her not worth the time to repeat the ordinary facts of
her life when she had just done so for Caroline May.
I Another poet whose biographical information came from
I Caroline May is Elizabeth Oakes Smith. At the time of his
death Griswold was in possession of the letter Oakes Smith
t
1 had sent to Caroline May containing biographical
information. Griswold must have received the letter from
May at the time he was compiling The Female Poets of
America. Several elements in Griswold's biographical
. sketch indicate his reliance on this letter. Here are the
passages of the letter that Griswold most clearly made use
of:
Oakes Smith
I was born . . . in a
pleasant country town
about twelve miles from
the City of Portland. .
, I was about sixteen, and
never did any little
creature more conscien
tiously forget the joys
, of girlhood, and hand
herself to the yoke of
I married life. (N.d., MB
The rest of Oakes Smith's letter was a personal and very
sentimental account of her childhood which Griswold did
not wish to use. It is a little surprising that Griswold
The Female Poets
This accomplished and
popular author was born
in a pleasant country
town about twelve miles
from the city of Port
land, in Maine.
At the early age of
sixteen, Miss Prince was
married to Mr. Seba
Smith. (FP 177)
214
would take the trouble to get this letter from May since
he was close friends with Oakes Smith and saw her
frequently during this period. In fact, most of her
biographical sketch came from Griswold's own knowledge of
her life and her publications.
No letters exist indicating any direct reliance on
Read for biographical information. Read seems to have
been more interested in physical portraits of the poets
than biographical ones. Since Read's book came out first,
however, it was certainly possible for Griswold to borrow
from it as a published source. George Boker, in fact,
made this suggestion to Griswold late in October. Boker,
a poet and dramatist, had been ferreting out information
on Eliza Sproat with little success. He wrote to
Griswold, "Enclosed you will find as much of Miss Sproat
as I can get hold of. If you want more you must fish from
Read's book etc. The biography is as complete as may be,
her life, as she says, having been so far entirely devoid
of interest" (Oct. 31, 1848, PHi). Griswold probably did
not follow Boker's advice. As it turns out Read's notice
of Sproat was short and rather general, poor pickings for
any serious borrowing. Griswold wrote a similarly short,
general sketch, probably relying on the information
supplied by Boker.
215
Griswold also relied on other printed sources for
biographical material for these poets. In Maria James1
headnote Griswold used the preface to Maria James1 1839
volume entitled Wales and other Poems as his main source
of information. The preface had been written by Bishop
Potter, a professor at Union College in Schenectady. In
the preface Potter quoted at length from a letter of Maria
James' which he had obtained from a friend who employed
James as a housekeeper. The letter recounted James' life
as a poor emigrant and her interest from childhood in
language. James' comments about her experience as a poet
fit very well both with the conventional view of women
poets at the time and Griswold's view. A woman became a
poet, not by choice or ambition, but because she could not
help herself. She produced poems without intention; she
did not seek to be published as a poet or to make money
with her poetry. Her poems were written in a burst of
enthusiasm and were only infrequently revised once they
were written. Griswold borrowed a long extract from the
letter and filled in the rest of the sketch with material
from Potter. Here is a significant passage from Maria
James' letter that Griswold included in the headnote:
As I advanced toward womanhood, I shrunk
from the nickname of poet, which had been
awarded me: the very idea seemed the height of
presumption. In my seventeenth year I left this
216
situation to learn dressmaking. I sewed neatly,
but too slow to insure success. My failure in
this was always a subject of regret.
With respect to the few poems which you have
been so kind as to overlook, I can hardly say
myself how they came to be written. I
recollect, many years ago, of trying something
in this way for the amusement of a little boy
who was very dear to me; except this, with a
very few other pieces, long forgotten, no
attempt of the kind was made until The Mother's
Lament, and Elijah, with a number of epitaphs,
which were written previous to those which have
been produced within the last six years. The
subject of the Hummingbird, (the oldest of
these,) was taken captive by my own hand. The
Adventure is described just as it happened.
Wales is a kind of retrospect of the days of
childhood. . . . The Album was begun and
carried through without previous arrangement or
design, laid aside when the mind was weary, and
taken up again just as the subject happened to
present itself. (FP 66-67)
There is no evidence to suggest that James was aware that
this letter to her friend would be included in Griswold's
anthology. Since Griswold does not mention James' current
circumstances or any of her recent work, it is likely that
he relied solely on the information included in this
letter, probably written in the late 1830's.
Griswold found as the editing went on that his own
early anthologies could be excellent sources for the
biographical sketches and he sometimes lifted his own work
almost verbatim for The Female Poets of America. In the
case of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, for example, every
bit of the sketch in The Poets and Poetry of America was
217
used in The Female Poets. Griswold added two new
paragraphs to open the sketch, added another poem of
Lucretia's, and finished their entry with a discussion of
the 1843 volume of their writings. Not all of the
sketches from The Poets and Poetry of America were so
useful, however. Most of the other sketches provided only
occasional facts, birthdates, the spouse's name, and
occasionally a phrase that was reuseable. Some of
Griswold's other anthologies, however, provided useful
material, particularly The Prose Writers of America.
Since Griswold had written this material himself he
felt no compunctions about using it again. In one case he
even recommended to his readers that they go back to his
earlier work for information on a poet. Griswold included
Lydia M. Child in The Female Poets of America, though she
was mainly a prose writer. He included two short poems
for her and a very sketchy biography calling her "one of
the most able and brilliant authors of the country, as is
shown by her Philothea, Letters from New York, and other
works, of which an account is given in the Prose Writers
of America" (FP 110). In fact, the extensive biography in
The Prose Writers of America could have easily supplied
the information for this sketch.
218
As with the poetry selections Griswold's major
sources for the biographical sketches were letters from
the women themselves, information gathered by editorial
colleagues, and published sources. Griswold did not
publish any of this material verbatim, but he paraphrased
very closely and almost never gave credit to his original
source. Elizabeth Ellet's biographical sketch is a good
example of this paraphrasing. Though Ellet had told
Griswold very firmly to put her sketch "into his own
language," Griswold's rewrite was heavily dependent on
Ellet. The first paragraph of Griswold's sketch is almost
identical to Ellet's:
Ellet
Mrs. Ellet's father was Dr.
Wm. A. Lummis a physician
and a pupil and friend of
Dr. Benjamin Rush, whom in
person he strikingly re
sembled. He resided for
some time at Woodbury,
N.J. (near Phila.) but
afterwards gave up the
practice of his profes
sion and removed to Sodus
Bay, New York, where he
purchased lands, and spent
his fortune in improving
them. He was a scholar,
a man of taste and refine
ment , and one of the high
ly respected citizens in
that portion of the state.
He died many years since.
His second wife was Sarah
Maxwell, the daughter of
The Female Poets
Mrs. Ellet's father was Dr.
William A. Lummis, a pupil
and friend of Dr. Benjamin
Rush, whom in person he
strikingly resembled. He
resided several years in
Woodbury, New Jersey; but,
afterward, giving up the
practice of his profession,
removed to Sodus Bay, on
Lake Ontario, in the state
of New York, where he
purchased lands and spent
his fortune in improving
them. He died many years
ago, eminently respected
for his abilities and
honorable character. His
second wife, the mother of
Mrs. Ellet, was Sarah
Maxwell, a daughter of
John Maxwell, a revo-
219
John Maxwell, a revo
lutionary officer and the
niece of Brigadier General
William Maxwell. . . . He
served to within two years
of the peace and then re
signed his commission in
displeasure because an
inferior officer was pro
moted over him. ([1848],
MB)
lutionary officer, and
niece of General William
Maxwell, who served in the
army with distinction from
Braddock's campaign until
near the close of the war
of independence, when an
injust system of promo
tions induced him with
many others to surrender
his commission. (FP 199)
Griswold added an original second paragraph of
Ellet's sketch in which he mentioned her marriage. The
bulk of the sketch summarized her works, and here again
Griswold made extensive use of both the information Ellet
sent him and, in a number of cases, her actual language.
The last part of the sketch was Griswold's. Griswold's
' general pattern in writing the biographical sketches was
to first cover the poet's personal life, then the works,
then in a final paragraph to evaluate. He closed
Elizabeth Ellet's sketch in this way:
The poems of Mrs. Ellet do not perhaps
evince much of the inspiration of genius, nor
have they the freshness which distinguishes much
verse that is very inferior in execution; but
while we rarely perceive in them anything that
is striking, they, as well as her prose works,
are uniformly respectable. The most creditable
illustrations of her abilities seem to be her
translations from the French and Italian
| languages, in which she has occasionally been
remarkably successful.
Mrs. Ellet now resides in New York. (FP
199)
220
Griswold's criticism of Ellet in this sketch caused a
furor that plagued Griswold to the end of his life.
Other poets also supplied the bulk of their
biographical headnote. Rebecca S. Nichols sent Griswold
information through her friend, Mary B. Williams, which
Griswold rewrote, frequently using Williams' language.
Here are the comparative passages:
Williams
Mrs. Nichols was born in
the little town of Green
wich, New Jersey in which
state she passed the most
of her childhood. She
came to the West with her
father Dr. Reed at the age
of seventeen and was mar
ried the year following
at Louisville Ky. to Mr.
W. Nichols of Homer, N. Y.
Her first appearance in
the literary world was
under the signature of
Ellen, in the "Louisville
News-Letter" in 1839. In
the same year Mr. Nichols
(who is a printer) remov
ed to St. Louis, Mo.
where he established a
daily paper entitled the
"Pennant," from which in
a few months he withdrew
and came to Cincinnati
in 1840 where they have
since resided.
Mrs. Nichols published
her volume in 1844. In
1845 she wrote a series
of articles for the
The Female Poets
Miss Rebecca S. Reed, now
Mrs. Nichols, is a native
of the little town of
Greenwich, in New Jersey,
her father was a physi
cian. When she was
seventeen years of age,
Dr. Reed removed to
Kentucky, and a few
months afterward she was
married, in Louisville,
to Mr. W. Nichols, of
Homer, in New York. Her
first appearance as an
author was under the
signature of "Ellen," in
the Louisville News
Letter, in 1839. In the
same year Mr. Nichols
removed to St. Louis,
where he established
The Pennant, a daily
gazette, from which in a
few months he withrew
and went to Cincinnati,
where he has since
resided.
In 1844, Mrs. Nichols
published a volume
entitled Bernice, or the
Curse of Minna, and
"Herald" then edited by
Dr. Bailey of the
"National Era," over the
signature of "Kate
Cleveland" which created
no little excitement
among the literary
savans to ascertain
the author. In the
spring of 1846 she est
ablished a little paper
entitled the "Guest,"
which died of proper
patronage. (March 27,
n.y., MB)
other Poems, and she has
since been a frequent
contributor to the
periodicals, under her
proper signature and
under that of "Kate
Cleveland." . . . Some
of her best pieces were
first published in The
Guest, a journal of
which she was editress.
(FP 316)
Caroline Sawyer's biographical sketch was also
heavily based on the letter she sent Griswold. Here are
three passages that show how Griswold typically borrowed
from her in his sketch:
Sawyer
My maiden name was
Fisher. I was born at
the close of the year
1812 in Newton Mass.
where I resided until
my marriage which took
place in Sept. 1832 when
I removed to New York . ,
The Female Poets
Caroline M. Fisher, now
Mrs. Sawyer, was born at
the close of the year
1812, in Newton, Mass
achusetts, where she
resided until her mar
riage with the Rev. T.
J. Sawyer . . . when she
removed to the city of
New York
My education was acquired
principally at home under
the parental charge of an
invalid uncle with whom I
was a favorite, and whose
i life has been spent in
\ the pursuit of science
and 1i terature.
I commenced the composi-
| tion of verse at an early
Mrs. Sawyer was very
carefully and thoroughly
educated at home, under
the care of an invalid
uncle whose life had
been passed in pursuits
of science and liter
ature .
She commenced the com
position of verse at an
222
age yet published little
until after my marriage.
I Since then my publica-
: tions have been very
, various and numerous,
I appearing in annuals,
! magazines, etc. My poems
have never been collected
although they have been
; enough in amount to fill
' several volumes. . . .
Had my writings been less
' confined to denoraina-
J tional annuals in their
publication it is pos
sible they might have
! been more widely known. .
' . . (Sept. 2, 1848, PHi)
On two occasions Griswold quoted directly from the
: poets' letters to him. In Alice and Phoebe Cary's
biographical sketch he paraphrased the biographical
information Alice had sent him and then quoted her
' directly on the subject of their literary output.
Griswold felt that Alice's letter was so moving that he
expressed to his readers his "regret that I may not copy
here entire, that the reader's affection might be kindled
with his admiration" (FP 372). Griswold also quoted a
' letter of Amelia Welby's in her biographical headnote.
, Weiby had written the letter in 1843 as a response to
I
| Griswold's request to publish her poems in Graham's and
t
j perhaps help her collect her works in a volume. Griswold
chose a very odd passage to quote, for in it Welby was
l assuring him, with the excessive modesty of the times,
early age, but published
little until after her
marriage. Since then she
has written much for
various miscellanies,
besides several volumes
of tales, sketches, and
essays, for children and
youth, which would prob
ably have been much
better known if they had
not come before the pubic
through denominational
channels of publication.
(FP 218)
223
18
that her poetry was not good enough to be collected.
She said, "My husband and friends here also desire greatly
to have a collection of my little poems published, but
really I am afraid they are not worth it. Many of them
were written when I was so very young, that at the sober
age of twenty-two I can scarcely read them without a
blush" (Welby to RWG, June 30, 1843, MB). Griswold's
stated purpose in publishing such a letter in Welby's
headnote was to indicate Welby's modesty. The letter
probably did more to denigrate her work.
Griswold also received biographical information from
the husbands of some of these poets and he paraphrased
their letters freely for the headnotes. The Rev. John
Gray wrote on behalf of his wife asking that Griswold
include a poem she had written based on James Montgomery's
"Night." Gray transcribed the piece into his letter and
told Griswold, "The above piece drew forth a letter from
James Montgomery in which he calls the writer a 'sister
poet' and says that the critics who mistook it for him
'did him honor'" (July 5, 1848, MB). Griswold accepted
Gray's version of the story and published it as follows in
18. Welby subsequently published this volume with
Griswold's help.
224
the headnote: "The poem entitled Morn, having been
attributed by some reviewer to Mr. Montgomery, that poet
observes, in a published letter, that the author of the
19
mistake 'did him honor'" (FP 104). Griswold went on,
however, to say of the poem that "It is certainly a fine
poem, though scarcely equal, perhaps, to some which Mrs.
Gray has written from the more independent suggestions of
her own mind" (FP 104). It seems quite unfair for
Griswold to accept the poem for publication, highlight it
in the biographical sketch, and then criticize it for not
being original enough.
Griswold also quoted Mr. William Burnett Kinney on
the poetry of his wife, Elizabeth Clementine Kinney. Mr.
Kinney had responded to Griswold's request for information
by sending along poems authorized by his wife and
information on her background. Griswold paraphrased this
biographical material in Mrs. Kinney's headnote. He also
emphasized a point that Mr. Kinney had made about his wife
feeling some constraint in her work since it was normally
written for publication and not simply for her own
19. What Griswold means here by a "published letter" is
unclear. Griswold's source is almost certainly the letter
from Gray, but that letter was sent to Griswold and could
hardly be considered a published source.
225
I
pleasure. He then quoted Mr. Kinney directly by saying:
One of her friends, whose opportunities to
know are as great as his acknowledged sagacity
1 of criticism to judge, observes, in a letter to
me, that 'decidedly the most free, salient, and
characteristic effusions of her buoyant spirit,
have been thrown off, currente calamo, in
correspondence and intercourse with her
' friends. (FP 195)
Griswold misused the information from Mr. Kinney in
several ways. Though Kinney1s remarks are put between
quotation marks, Griswold had not transcribed the letter
word for word. He had ammended it slightly to fit his
needs. The "quotation" from Kinney was almost as much a
paraphrase as Griswold's other borrowing from the letter
' had been. Griswold also did his reader's a disservice by
not mentioning the rather important fact that this
"friend" of Mrs. Kinney's whose "sagacity of criticism"
made him such a fine judge was actually the poet's
husband. It is significant that Griswold did not tell his
readers whom he was quoting, either in Mr. Kinney's case
or in Rev. Gray's.
Griswold depended heavily on information that came to
' him from his literary friends. When a colleague would
write to him with information he often included whole
sections of the letter in the biographical headnote. For
I example, when Dr. Francis sent information on Cynthia
i
i
I
' 226
Taggart, Griswold included what appears to be all or most
of the letter in her headnote, leaving very little for him
1
I
! to write himself. This tendency in Griswold to include
' long passages from his correspondents is one of the
i reasons that the headnotes in The Female Poets of America
i are so different in quality from each other. In this
1 particular case Dr. Francis* description of Taggart's life
i is more sentimental and more melodramatic that Griswold's
. would likely have been. Here is what Francis said of
| Taggart:
An intimate acquaintance, derived from
professional observation, has long rendered me
well informed of the remarkable circumstances
connected with the severe chronic infirmities of
Cynthia Taggart. From her early infancy, during
the period of her adolescence, and indeed
| through the whole duration of her life, she has
been the victim of almost unrecorded anguish.
The annals of medical philosophy may be seached
in vain for a more striking example than the
case of this lady affords of that distinctive
twofold state of vitality with which we are
endowed, the intellectual and the physical
being. The precarious tenure by which they have
continued so long united in so frail a tenement,
must remain matter of astonishment to every
1 beholder; and when reflection is summoned to the
contemplation of the extraordinary
manifestations of thought which under suach a
state of protracted and incurable suffering she
| often exhibits, psychologial science encounters
j a problem of most difficult solution. Mind
| seems independent of matter, and intellectual
triumphs appear to be within the reach of
j efforts unaided by the ordinary resources of
corporeal organization. That this condition
must ere long terminate disastrously is certain;
yet the phenomena of mind amid the ruins of the
227
| body constitute a subject of commanding interest
' to every philanthropist. Churchill has truly
! said, in his epistle to Hogarth: "With curious
: art the brain too finely wrought,/ Preys on
i herself, and is destroyed by thought." (FP 133)
These remarks of Dr. Francis' constituted most of
, Taggart's headnote and they did little to help Griswold's
| readers understand Taggart as a poet. Francis wrote about
> Taggart's health because he was a physician and it was
that aspect of Taggart that most interested him.
Griswold also included a long quotation "from a
correspondent" in his biographical sketch of Lydia Jane
Peirson. After a very brief outline of her life in a
remote area of Pennsylvania, Griswold published this
, "pleasing incident of her history" which had been sent to
him:
At a period when the best abilities of
Pennsylvania were active in recommending plans
for the general education of the people, Mr.
Thaddeus Stevens, now a member of Congress, but
then a representative in the state legislature,
made a masterly speech upon the subject, which
was seconded by a spirited and elegant poem
[written by Peirson] that attracted general
attention. Judge Ellis Lewis, so well known as
one of our most accomplished jurists, was deeply
interested in the movement, and actively engaged
in efforts to induce its success. Pleased with
the poem, he made inquiries respecting its
i author, and learned that her husband, by a
| series of misfortunes, had been reduced to a
j condition of extreme pecuniary embarrassment,
i and that his family was without a home. Meeting
! Mr. Stevens, who is scarcely less known for his
j generosity than for those splendid powers which
228
have raised him to so high a rank in his
profession and among the managers of affairs, he
communicated to him the circumstances, and
suggested that something should be done for the
relief of the poetess. Mr. Stevens authorized
the judge to consult with Mrs. Peirson, purchase
for her such a farm as she might select, and
draw on him for the cost. Neither Judge Lewis
nor Mr. Stevens had ever seen her, but the
former apprized her of his commission, and the
design was executed. She chose a beautiful
little estate which chanced to be in the market;
it was purchased by Judge Lewis; the deed, drawn
to Thaddeus Stevens in trust for Lydia Jane
Peirson and her heirs and assigns, was sent to
her; and she now lives upon it in pleasant
independence. (FP 256)
Griswold ended the sketch by giving publication dates for
Peirson's two published volumes of poetry.
Griswold was fond of these sentimental stories and
included them in the headnotes whenever he could, though
it is easy to imagine the distress this kind of disclosure
must have caused the Peirson family. By focusing on the
personal details of the poet's family Griswold drew
attention away from the poet as a poet. At least one of
the poets Griswold included in The Female Poets of America
noticed this tendency in Griswold to include extraneous
material in the headnote. Sarah Josepha Hale, after
having seen the proof sheets for The Female Poets of
America, asked Griswold not to mention anything about her
son in her biographical headnote. Hale's son, David, who
had graduated eighth in his class at West Point and been
229
| stationed on the Canadian border, had died of a hemorrage
in 1839. Hale cautioned Griswold, "I feel sure [David]
would not be pleased with the allusion, and it is in
acccordance with your taste to avoid all extraneous
subjections in such a work. Keep the ladies only in view"
: (Hale to RWG, Oct. 17, 1848, PHi). Hale’s son was left
, out of the headnote, but Griswold continued to focus on
family relationships in the other headnotes.
One of Griswold's most helpful editorial colleagues
was William D. Gallagher, the editor of the 1841 anthology
Selections from the the Poetical Literature of the West.
Gallagher provided the biographical information for Sophia
H. Oliver and "The Two Sisters of the West," Catherine
Warfield and Eleanor Lee. In the case of Warfield and
Lee, Griswold relied on a letter from Gallagher dated
October 6, 1848 (PHi) which supplied all of the
biographical data used in the sketch. Griswold wrote a
relatively long sketch for these sisters, and only the
first two paragraphs contained biographical information;
the rest was analysis of their poems, which Griswold had
clearly read and analyzed himself. Gallagher's material
was carefully rewritten and could not be considered a
paraphrase.
230
In the case of Sophia Oliver, however, Griswold wrote
a very short sketch and is entirely dependent on
Gallagher. Gallagher had sent Griswold information on
Warfield and Lee at Griswold's request. He sent
information on Sophia Oliver because he thought she might
be suitable for Griswold's anthology (Gallagher to RWG,
Oct. 6, 1848, PHi). Neither Griswold nor Gallagher
thought her a first rank poet— Gallagher called her
"inferior to those whom you name," i.e. Warfield and
Lee— and Griswold treated her accordingly in the volume.
Here is a comparison of the information Gallagher sent
Griswold and the final sketch of Oliver:
Gallagher
She was born in Lexing
ton, Ky. in 1811; married
Dr. J. H. Oliver in 1837;
next year removed to
Louisville; then back;
and in 1842 came to
reside permanently in
Cincinnati, where her
husband in a professor in
one of our medical col
leges. (Oct. 6, 1848,
PHi)
The Female Poets
This author was born in
Lexington, Kentucky,in
1811, and in 1837 was
married to Dr. J. H.
Oliver. The next year
she removed to Louis
ville, whence after a
short time she returned
to Lexington, and in 1842
she went to reside per
manently in Cincinnati,
in one of the medical
colleges of which her
husband is a professor.
(FP 214)
Though Gallagher was eager to help Griswold, he made
it clear to Griswold that he could have been much more
231 i
i
helpful had Griswold called on him earlier. Gallagher
i
: began his October 6 letter by apologizing for the delay in
answering and pointing out Griswold's tardiness in asking
for help:
Absence from the city for a time, and an
urgent press of editorial duties since my
return, have delayed a reply to your letter so
long, that I fear it will be of no use to you
when received. Had you made early application
to me, it would have afforded me pleasure to
furnish you with brief notices of the Two
Sisters, as well as of Mrs. Thurston, Mrs.
Bailey, and one or two other lady writers of the
West, with reference to whose productions at
least, if not of whose existence, you are most
probably ignorant. (Oct. 6, 1848, PHi)
Griswold continued to call on his friends for
information throughout the fall. Though the book came out
late in December, Griswold received information from his
literary colleagues as late as early December (Passages
243) .
When the book was finally published, one of its
weaknesses was the fact that the biographical sketches
were so unsystematic. Griswold had received his
I
' information from various sources and had done little to
■' reshape it into a coherent format. Thus the sketch of
j Catherine Esling who had written for Griswold when he was
j a-fc Graham1s could consist of two sentences of
i autobiography while the sketch of Maria Brooks ran to more
| than thirteen pages citing numerous examples of her
i
' poetry. In many cases Griswold had depended on old
information for the headnotes or borrowed large sections
of text from his friends or published sources. In sum,
Griswold had not properly fulfilled his role as editor.
| He had not functioned as a screen for his material,
I
judging the value of the information he got, substantially
rewriting what would be published, and digging for
information on poets who were not readily accessible to
1 him. Some of the faults in The Female Poets of America
could be attributed to the time constraints Griswold felt
' he was laboring under. He was determined to get to press
as quickly as possible, so that Thomas Read's and Caroline
May's volumes would not supercede his. Griswold's health
had also interfered in the work, particularly in the fail
of 1848 when both his tuberculosis and his nerves gave him
trouble.
But it was Griswold's temperament and his work habits
that had the most significant impact on how The Female
Poets of America was compiled. Early in his career
Griswold established a pattern of relying on information
' sent in by friends, combing old anthologies, using
material that was at hand. Griswold had made his
reputation on The Poets and Poetry of America published in
233
1842. It was Griswold's best work and the most thoroughly
researched anthology he ever published. However, even
while compiling The Poets and Poetry of America Griswold
had used the same methods of compiling as he used in The
Female Poets of America. He solicited biographical
sketches from his friends, plucked poems from earlier
anthologies, and without giving credit quoted information
from the poets themselves. After The Poets and Poetry of
America was published, Griswold used that first collection
as a source for almost every other anthology he
published. Griswold was a diligent worker, but he did not
have a first-rate intellect, nor did he have the patience
for careful, painstaking scholarship. He frequently took
on several projects at once, partly because he needed the
cash, but also because he liked the feeling that his work
was much in demand. Some of his books suffered from his
methods of scholarship more than others, but all of his
anthologies show evidence of Griswold's limitations of
temperament and intellect.
The reviews of The Female Poets of America that began
coming out in January 1849 made it clear that some critics
were aware of the faults in Griswold's most recent
anthology, even if Griswold was not.
234
Chapter 5
The Female Poets of America
The Female Poets of America made its debut just
before Christmas 1848, not early enough for the Christmas
trade, but within only a couple of months of the rival
anthologies by Read and May. Carey and Hart of
Philadelphia were the publishers, and their record book
shows December 13 as the date the book was completed
(Bayless 150). A close friend of Griswold's, Horace
Binney Wallace, wrote to him on December 18 with the
announcement that the book was "out" and sent Griswold the
"first copy which has come from the binder's hands"
(Passages 245). A copy of the work was deposited in the
20
Library of Congress on December 29.
Griswold had worked so feverishly on the volume that
by the time it appeared he was in a state of nervous
20. Dated copyright papers for The Female Poets of America
are in the possession of the Historical Society of
Pennysylvania.
235
exhaustion. He told Whipple late in November that he had
suffered an epileptic fit (RWG to E. P. Whipple, n.d.,
21
MB). In a letter to Fields written in early December he
described his condition while composing the preface for
the volume:
I have several times approached my table
and written a line or two, and then yielded to
that terrible inertia, or excitement, which has
driven me to restless inaction, or to— tears.
My dear friend, I write to you confidentially.
You must not show this letter, nor speak of it.
I am in a terrible condition, physically and
mentally. I do not know what the end will be— I
dare not die— I scarcely care to live— I am
exhausted— betwixt life and death— and heaven
and hell.
That book— the Female Poets— was not
finished until a few days ago. I could not
summon energy to write the preface. At last,
with a letter from Hart before me, I took opium,
and secured a temporary animation, for which I
have since suffered, severely. In the same way I
wrote a sermon, which had been promised several
months in advance. It will not do to repeat
these experiments. ([1848], CSmH)
The preface caused another little halt in the
proceedings before the book could be published. Griswold
wrote to Carey and Hart on December 11, sending a recast
copy of the preface explaining,
21. Griswold's letter was a response to a letter from
Whipple which Griswold received on November 24, 1848, and
was probably written, therefore, just a few days after the
24th.
236
22
When the preface was stereotyped (of The
Fein. Poets,) I was unable to read the proof, and
so did not discover that from not having
finished one of the pages of copy, it had been
set up imperfectly. Three pages of it have
therefore been recast, corrected, at my cost,
and they are now sent on to you— I hope in time
to be used in the printing. (Dec. 11, 1848,
CSmH)
As more than one critic pointed out, the book was
nicely printed and beautifully bound. The first edition
was bound in purple and gold on high quality paper and
sold for five dollars a copy (Pattee 99). Godey's Lady * s
Book approved both its appearance and its content and
. recommended it as a Valentine present (Feb. 1849; XXXVIII,
152). In the years that followed The Female Poets of
America could be found on parlor tables all over America,
along with The Lives of Eminent Christians by Richard
Brindley Hone and the Bible (Pattee 82).
The women who were included in the volume were
anxious to see themselves in print, and Rufus Griswold had
promised copies of the book to some of the poets. In
> mid-January, however, he was still waiting for copies from
the publisher (RWG to Carey and Hart, Jan. 15, 1849,
I 22. Griswold dated the letter Saturday, December 11,
| 1847. The year is incorrect. The context of the letter
; indicates that the letter was written in 1848 as does the
fact that December 11 fell on a Saturday in 1848 but not
I in 1847.
237
PHi). When the copies finally did come Griswold dispersed
them freely to poets and friends who had helped with the
volume. Anne Lynch received a copy which Griswold
23
inscribed and dated January 19, 1849. A copy was also
sent to E. D. Ingraham who had written a biographical
24
sketch for the volume.
Another friend who received a copy was Griswold's old
friend, Horace Greeley. Griswold's friends generally
assumed that when they received a copy of one of
Griswold's anthologies they were expected to review it,
favorably, for whatever publication they were working
for. Greeley began a thank-you note for the volume: "I
received your 'Female Poets' yesterday, and am greatly
obliged for it. I believe it has been amply noticed in
the Tribune, but I will do the worth of it somewhere"
(Passages 248). Horace Binney Wallace wrote a notice of
the book which he sent to Griswold to have published,
explaining,
I would send it to Morris, but his paper
generally goes to press on Tuesday, and it would
23. This copy is owned by the Beinecke Library at Yale
University.
24. Ingraham's copy is owned by the Fred Lewis Pattee
Library at Pennsylvania State University. Griswold dated
his inscription December 19, 1848.
238
be too late for this week. I therefore send it
on to you, that you may have it inserted in the
Tribune or any other influential paper at
once— so that C[arey] and H[art] may quote it
when they announce the book.
You might try whether it is in time for
Morris. Tell him confidentially the facts, or
show him this note. If you do not get it in
time for his paper, I will write another for
him, for next week. I will sent you some more
notices in the course of a day or two. It is
the best book you have yet made. I predict
great popularity for it. (Passages 245-46)
The book's publishers, Carey and Hart, sent copies to
a number of editors, in some cases without consulting
Griswold, who was quite touchy about who would review the
book. Griswold wrote to Hart on January 9:
If I had known you were to distribute
copies of my new edition, I should have begged
you not to send any to the Litferary] World.
Tuckerman has this week noticed it in the Home
Journal. If you think it worth while to send
him one, Briggs will write a long article about
it in the Dollar Magazine (care of Putnam)."
(Jan. 9, 1849, NHi)
Griswold's fear of the Literary World was a fear of
Evert Duyckinck. Duyckinck had returned to his post as
editor of the Literary World in the fall of 1848, and
Griswold complained to Fields in a letter that he would
once again be "the butt of its ceaseless scurrility"
(n.d., CSmH). He proved to be right. Duyckinck had
little regard for Griswold's particular literary talents,
and a very critical review of The Female Poets of America
239
appeared in the January 27 issue (1849; Literary World IV,
78-79).
Griswold directed the publishers to send copies to
several people who might give it a good review. John
Reuben Thompson, the editor at the Southern Literary
Messenger, received a copy of The Female Poets of America
and assumed that it had been sent by Griswold personally
since, as he said, Carey and Hart "do not usually send me
their publications." He assured Griswold that he would
prepare a notice for the February issue of the Messenger
and asked Griswold to send a second copy so that he could
give this copy to Susan Archer Talley whose poetry
appeared in the volume (Jan. 16, 1849, MB). Griswold also
sent a copy to The Chronotype. a publication he rather
liked, though, as he told his friend Fields, "it has
abused me once or twice" (Jan. 14, 1849, CSmH).
Fields also reviewed the book in an unsigned noticed'
in the March issue of Graham1s. In the review Fields
praised Griswold's anthology and tried to deflect
Griswold's enemies. The first paragraph set the tone for
the review:
In the space of four hundred closely
printed pages, Mr. Griswold has here brought
together some ninety of our female poets, and
introduced them with critical and biographical
240
notices. Of all Mr. Griswold's various works,
the present evinces the greatest triumph over
difficulties, and best demonstrates the
minuteness and the extent of his knowledge of
American literature. Very few of the women
included in this collection have ever published
editions of their writings, and a considerable
portion of the verse was published anonymously.
The labor, therefore, of collecting the
materials both of the biographies and the
illustrative extracts, must have been of that
arduous and vexatious kind which only enthusiasm
for the subject could have sustained. The
volume is an important original contribution to
the literary history of the country, and nobody,
whose mind is not incurably vitiated by
prejudice, can make dissimilarity of opinion
with regard to some of the judgments expressed
in the book, a ground for denying its general
ability, honesty and value. Most of the
materials are strictly new, and this fact of
itself is sufficient to stamp the work with that
character which distinguishes books of original
research from mere compilations. (March 1849;
Graham1s XXXIV, 213)
Fields went on to praise the work of specific poets: Miss
Townsend, Miss Gould, Maria Brooks, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs.
Embury, Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Oakes Smith, and Fanny Osgood.
He also referred to the poets whose work was not
well-known, praising Griswold for the inclusion of "many a
timid violet and daisy of womanhood, too modest and
sensitive not to feel the fear of notoriety" (214). Most
of the other critics who reviewed the book found it full
of poets and poetry who did not deserve to be included.
Fields' unmitigated praise The Female Poets was a
source of delight to his friend Griswold. Fields
241
■ apparently wrote to Griswold in January informing him that
he had written up some "first rate notices" which he
25
intended to publish. Griswold wrote to Fields on
January 14 saying, "As to those 'first rate
notices'— thanks" (Jan. 14, 1849, CSmH). Griswold wrote a
second thank-you letter, probably after he had actually
read the notice. Once Griswold was sure that Fields'
notice contained not a trace of disapproval his enthusiasm
increased. He wrote to Fields, "My dear James, how are
you? How is our great American critic?— greater than ever
since that 'first rate' notice in the March Graham" ([c.
Feb.] [1849], CSmH).
The periodicals that published women's poetry
extensively were delighted with The Female Poets of
America. The review in The National Era summarized the
book's assets by saying:
A short, but well-written preface by the
author contains some discriminative remarks on
the poetry of our women, and prefixed to the
quotations from each writer, we find a sketch of
her life, and a critical notice of her
productions. The Collection, as a whole,
evinces great industry and good taste. (1849;
The National Era III, 25)
25. This is established by the thank-you notes written by
Griswold.
242
The review then included the full text of the headnotes
, for the Cary sisters and Grace Greenwood who were "some of
i
I our most esteemed contributors" for The National Era.
i
Gamaliel Bailey, the editor of The National Era had good
reason to approve of The Female Poets of America. His
I
wife, Margaret, was included in the volume.
Not all of Griswold's friends believed that The
i Female Poets of America was Griswold's best work. Greeley
wrote Griswold a letter which enumerated the book's
strengths and weaknesses. Greeley's letter was carefully
! worded so as not to arouse the hypersensitive Griswold.
! Greeley was particularly struck by some unpleasant
comments that Griswold had made in his preface about the
i competing anthologies by Read and May. He told Griswold
that the book was
a good collection, though your style is
stiff, and a critic can readily detect
samenesses in the notices— can detect them
easier than he could avoid them, I fancy. Your
touch to T. B. Read and Miss C. May is cruelly
severe— I don't say it is not just, but it will
! add to the already respectable list of your
! enemies.
I
What I write for is simply to compliment
j you on the admirable execution of the work in a
j secondary sense— not really typographical, nor
mechanical, but something above but including
these. How could you make the pieces fill out
columns and the different subjects square out
pages so well without being present in
Philadelphia? I had to fight desperately with
243
the Whig Almanac for some approximation to this
; and only succeeded so long as I made it myself.
| (Passages 245)
Greeley had managed to extravagantly compliment Griswold
I
on a minor point in the book— the layout of the
columns— while seriously criticizing both Griswold's
writing style and the biographical sketches which
1 constituted much of Griswold's work.
One of Griswold's other friends who received a free
copy found the book even more distasteful than Greeley
had. E. D. Ingraham, a lawyer and author from
Philadelphia, had furnished Griswold with a biographical
sketch of Mrs. Ferguson and was therefore sent a copy of
the finished book (RWG to Carey and Hart, July 19, 1848,
, NNPM). Griswold inscribed it "To E. D. Ingraham, Esquire
from his obliged friend, Rufus W. Griswold." Ingraham
took issue with the book on two counts: its regionalism
and the poor quality of the poetry included in it. On the
flyleaf of his copy he listed the poets by the state of
their origin as follows:
94 Female Poets — of whom
10 are from Pennsylvania 17 from New York
2
3
2
2
2
1
Maryland
Virginia 1 from R. I.
South Carolina
Kentucky
Mississippi
Delaware
244
2
1
4
4
1
New Jersey
Michigan
Ohio
English & Welsh women—
Negro women— and the
rest all Yankees— (44) and the Editor too
(copy owned PSt)
Ingraham also disliked the contents of the book,
noticing how contrived and imitative many of the poems
; were. He pasted a newspaper clipping which he dated "Dec.
1848" in the flyleaf of his copy. It read:
Sweeping Reply to Poetical Correspondents—
A Boston weekly thus touches off some of its
contributors: At the present, we have sixteen
poems commencing with "Ye gods;" twenty with "
0! ye powers;" twelve with "Blow soft, ye
breezes;" and what is very remarkable, while we
have only five beginning with "0! deluding
men," we have forty commencing with "O! false
woman!" which shows a heavy balance of deceit
against the charming young ladies. In fine, the
poetry we have received for some time past may
be classed under three great divisions— the
profoundly dim— the elegantly absurd— and the
contemptibly silly. (PSt)
Most of the reviews of Griswold's Female Poets of
America mentioned the sudden interest the public seemed to
be taking in women's poetry and the fact that two other
anthologies had appeared just before Griswold's. Some
reviews surveyed all three books comparatively. Griswold
himself had made his competition with Read and May more
intense by talking about their rivalry in the preface to
The Female Poets of America. In the preface he attacked
245
the scholarship and even the honor of Read and May. He
26
! explained to his public,
I
When I completed "The Poets and Poetry of
America," a work of which the public approval
has been illustrated in the sale of ten large
editions, I determined upon the preparation of
the present volume, the appearance of which has
been delayed by my interrupted health. I must
be permitted, however, to congratulate with the
public, that since my intention was announced
and known, others have relieved me from the
responsibility of singly executing that which I
had been hardy enough singly to plan and
propose. Their merits may compensate for my
i deficiencies. The first volume of this nature
, which appeared in this country, was printed in
Philadelphia in 1844, under the title of "Gems
from American Female Poets, with brief
biographies, by Rufus W. Griswold." As Mr. T.
B. Read, in his "Female Poets of America," (it
is Mr. Read's publisher who declares, in the
advertisement to this work, that "the
biographical notices which it contains have been
prepared in every instance from facts either
within his personal knowledge, or communicated
to him directly by the authors or their
friends,") and Miss C. May, in her "American
Female Poets," (in the preface to which she
acknowledges a resort to "printed authorities,")
have done me the honor to copy that slight
performance with only a too faithful closeness,
I owe them apologies for having led them into
some errors of fact. Both of them, transcribing
from the "Gems," speak of Mrs. Mowatt as the
daughter of "the late" Mr. Samuel Gouverneur
Ogden: I am happy to contradict the record, by
stating that Mr. Ogden still enjoys in health
and vigor the honors of living excellence. Mr.
Read, reproducing my early mistake, has given
Mrs. Hall the Christian name of Elizabeth, and
I the birthplace of Boston. Nothing but the
26. Griswold here refers to the second edition of Gems.
The first edition was published in 1842.
246
extraordinary haete with which the trifling
volume of 1844 was put together could excuse my
ignorance that the name of the authoress of
"Miriam" was Louisa Jane, and that she was a
native of Newburyport. In one or the other of
these volumes are many more errors, for which I
confess myself solely responsible: but it would
be tedious to point them out, while it would be
scarcely necessary to do so as they will
undoubtedly be corrected, from the present work,
should the volumes referred to attain to second
editions. (FP 6)
: Griswold's purpose in this passage is quite clear.
i
i He wished make clear to his audience that he had thought
of editing a collection of women's poetry first, that in
i
!
I fact his Gems from American Female Poets had been the
; first volume of poetry by American women, thus making the
volumes by Read and May imitations, heavily dependent on
his original work. He pointed out that Read and May had
copied "many errors" from his Gems by apologizing for
those errors. He excused his own errors in Gems because
that "trifling volume" had been put together with such
"extraordinary haste.” The implication is that
full-fledged volumes such as Read and May had produced had
no excuse for such errors. Griswold also emphasized the
! ten editions into which his Poets and Poetry of America
i had been published, consoling Read and May that their
i
: mistakes could be corrected from Griswold's Female Poets
"should" their volumes "attain to second editions."
247
Griswold's criticisms had some validity, but they did
not endear him to his rivals or the public. Even the most
neutral reviews found this passage distressing. The
review in Sartain1s Union Magazine published in June
praised the look of Griswold's volume, its
comprehensiveness, and the biographical sketches. It said
the preface was "written with ability," but found "its
allusions to the two rival publications not in the very
best taste" (June 1849; Sartain1s Union Magazine IV, 415).
Griswold complained both publicly and privately of
Read's and May's dependence on his work. In a letter to
Fields he told his friend:
Read, you will see, has cancelled his
grosser blunders, but he has not mended his
preface. Miss May's book is a tolerable one.
It is for the most part cribbed from mine, with
all the mistakes of my "Gems," first edition.
Thus, Mrs. Sawyer, is wife of a Presbyterian
instead of Universalist; Mrs. Mowatt is daughter
of the late S. G. Ogden, instead of the present;
Mrs. Brooks is a daughter of Gowan instead of
Gowen, &tc. &tc. &tc. She says she relied on
"printed” material, but when that material was
by a rival author it should have been so stated
(RWG to Fields, [1848], CSmH).
Griswold's comment that Read had "cancelled his
grosser blunders" but "not mended his preface" may
indicate that Griswold had seen early drafts or, perhaps,
proof sheets of Read's book before the published version
248
appeared. Certainly both authors had come to Griswold for
help and advice. Griwold had offered his assistance to
Caroline May through Dr. Bethune, an offer she
enthusiastically accepted. Several letters remain in
which she asked for biographical information and copies of
poems (C. May to RWG, n.d.; C. May to RWG, May 1, 1848,
ViU). He had also given permission for both Read and May
to use his Gems from American Female Poets. What annoyed
Griswold so thoroughly was that he had not been given full
credit by Read or May. Read made no mention of Griswold's
help in his first edition, and May had referred to
Griswold's help for only one poet.
Griswold's comments on Read's borrowing of
information caused changes to be made in the third edition
of Read's anthology. At the beginning of the volume the
publishers placed what was called an "Advertisement to the
Third Edition," in order to explain some of the
discrepancies that Griswold had mentioned in his preface.
Their explanation dealt specifically with the statement in
Read's first edition that Read's biographical notices had
"been prepared in every instance from facts either within
his personal knowledge, or communicated to him directly by
the authors or their friends." Since some of Read's
information had clearly come from Griswold and not Read's
1 own knowledge, Read's publishers included a long quotation
from Griswold's preface which contained the charges and
then offered this explanation:
i
The explanation which we wish to make is,
that we had understood that Mr. Read, our
Editor, had obtained from the authors or their
personal friends, all the biographical facts
contained in this volume, and we so announced
it; but, upon further inquiry of Mr. Read, we
learn that in a few instances, with the
permission of the owners of the copyright of
Griswold's "Gems of Female Poets,1 1 some
information was sought for in that volume, and
used in the first and second editions of this
work. We have since found that authority not at
all reliable; the two instances referred to
above are not the only errors in Mr. Griswold's
work, indeed so numerous are they, as to render
such authority of no value. In this, the third
edition, we hope that all errors, whether Mr.
Griswold's or our Editor's, have been
corrected. The second edition of this work was
printed and published before Mr. Griswold's
allusion to the possibility of such an issue.
(Read, Publisher's Note)
Though Griswold felt he had been badly treated by
Read and May, he did not feel quite comfortable with what
he had written in the preface. He wrote to Fields,
enclosing a copy of what he had written: "I inclose [sic]
for your private view the contents etc. Did I wrong in
■ the last paragraphs of the preface?" ([1848], CSmH).
Most of the literary world felt that he had.
For all Griswold's concern about the rival
anthologies, his volume was much superior to either of the
250
others. Both of them looked as elegant as Griswold’s, but I
neither were as full as his or as scholarly. Read's book
i
i was elegantly bound in black leather with a gilt engraving
I
on the front cover of a writer's desk and an artist's
easel, symbolizing the fact that the book's editor, who
i
j was both a poet and an artist, had done portraits of some
! of the poets which were included in the book as
j engravings. The engravings were a selling point of the
book, and the editor's attention to them caused the
content of the book to suffer. Though Read's book was
: technically as long as Griswold's— 420 pages to Griswold's
400— it contained only a fraction of the material.
Griswold had designed his book with double columns of
poetry in small print. There was very little white space
between poems or between authors. Read's book had lots of
white space, single columns, and large print. The layout
was looser and not as professionally done.
Read's biographical sketches also suffered in
i
’ comparison to Griswold's. In most cases Read's sketches
| were only a paragraph long, not long enough to give any
I
: sense of the poet's career or publications. Sometimes a
i
poet appeared with no sketch whatever, as Carnelia Da
Ponte and Mary Lawson did. Read may have planned from the
beginning to include only short sketches. When Lydia
251
Sigourney sent him biographical information for his volume
Read felt compelled to explain to her:
In order to give more room to the poetry I
shall have to make the biographical notices as
short as possible. I will, with your
permission, condense what will serve my purpose
from the paper which you have so kindly
furnished and return it in a few days. (Jan. 9,
1846, CtHi)
Sigourney had a tendency to write long letters full of
information, but Read had no intention of filling his
volume with biography.
He did not, however, seem anxious to fill it with
poetry either. Read included only a handful of poems for
each poet and none of Read's poets got the thorough
treatment that some of Griswold's poets like Maria Brooks
and Lydia Sigourney did. Read included seventy-one poets
in his 420 pages; Griswold included ninety-four in his 400
pages with much more comprehensive poetry selections and
longer biographical sketches.
Instead, Read had concentrated on his engravings, and
it was in this area that Griswold had most cause to feel
threatened. Read included engravings of eight of the
poets included in his volume: Anne Lynch, Lydia
Sigourney, Elizabeth Ellet, Sarah Josepha Hale, Elizabeth
Oakes Smith, Amelia Welby, Elizabeth C. Kinney, and "Grace
252
Greenwood" a.k.a. Sara J. Clarke. Read found out that the
portraits were a major task. Not only did they take
considerable time, it was also difficult to arrange to
have them done at all. Most of the women Read eventually
painted lived in New York City, probably because it was so
much more convenient for him to paint those who lived
where he did. Read's method for making the engraving was
first to paint his subject, then make an engraving based
on the portrait.
Read was particularly anxious to have an engraving of
Mrs. Sigourney, one of the best known of the women poets,
who lived in Hartford. Read exchanged numerous letters
with her between January and June, 1848, trying to arrange
a time to paint her portrait. Eventually he realized that
he would be unable to travel to Connecticut to paint her
and he tried several alternatives. He asked her to send a
daguerreotype, which unfortunately was unsuitable because
she was wearing a bonnet in it (Read to Sigourney, March
13, 1848, ViU). He encouraged her to come to New York
where he could "take whatever pains and time .
necessary to make the picture satisfactory" (Read to
Sigourney, May 12, 1848, CtHi).
253
Eventually he had to make do with a miniature which
he could copy for the volume (Read to Sigourney, June 28,
1848, TxU). The portraits were engraved by Joseph Pease,
and their final quality was very poor. Read himself wrote
to Bayard Taylor after the book came out, asking, "Have
you seen 'The Female Poets' and don't you think the
pictures horrid? You can judge for yourself whether they
do me justice. But don't say anything" (Read to Taylor,
Oct. 11, 1848, NIC).
Though the engravings in Read's book were poor, they
still occasioned Griswold's envy. He had included
engravings of the poets in his The Poets and Poetry of
America, but had not had sufficient editing time to do the
same for The Female Poets of America. Instead he included
six engravings which had nothing to do with either the
poets or the poetry included in The Female Poets. Some of
the engravings were entitled "Summer," "Winter Sport," and
"Our Father’s Darling." Perhaps the most inappropriate
selection was "Washington Crossing the Alleghany." One
review of Read's Female Poets of America made much of the
fact that only Read's book could claim "to be an
illustrated volume, which presents illustrations that were
not engraved for other works, and have not previously
27
adorned other volumes." The public was so fond of
engravings, however, that they approved even of Griswold's
engravings. Godev's Lady1s Book described Griswold's
i
: Female Poets as "embellished with very fine engravings"
' < (Feb. 1849; XXXVIII, 152). Sartains' s Union Magazine said
i the book was "adorned with six fine steel engravings all
i
j of high artistic merit" and described one of the
! engravings, "The Country Maiden," as "an exquisite work of
i art" (June 1849; IV, 415).
I
i
Caroline May's American Female Poets was less of a
threat to Griswold than Read's volume. Her volume
. contained only two engravings, one entitled "The Poet's
i Home," the other a portrait of Fanny Osgood who had helped
May gather biographical information (Fanny Osgood to S. H.
Whitman, March 26, 1848, RPB-JH). May's volume was
published in a smaller format than Read's or Griswold's.
; In 599 pages she included seventy-nine poets in single
, columns, but with smaller print than in Read's volume.
1 The volume was bound in navy leather with gold trim and
^ was intended, as Fanny Osgood told Mrs. Whitman, as a
"gift book for 1849." In fact. May's anthology was more
27. This review was pasted in E. D. Ingraham's copy of The
Female Poets of America, located in the Fred Lewis Pattee
Library at Pennsylvania State University.
255
than a gift book', and though it was more heavily dependent
on information from Griswold than Read's book was, it was
also more carefully edited. Caroline May's biographical
sketches were longer and more systematic than Read's,
though they were not nearly so thorough as Griswold's.
The style of the sketches was more "chatty" and less
scholarly than Griswold's. She was more likely to dwell
on interesting biographical facts about the poets than on
the history of their literary output.
Like Griswold and Read, Caroline May had attempted to
gain information for the biographical sketches by applying
to the poets themselves, and like them she often got far
less information than she would have liked. She
apologized in the preface to The American Female Poets for
the sketches being short, explaining that she had wished
to protect the privacy of the women included and that many
of the poets had sent her little information. May
explained that "several of our correspondents declared
their fancies to be their only facts; others that they had
done nothing all their lives; and some,— with a modesty
most extreme— that they had not lived at all" (May,
preface, viii).
256
May's editing of the anthology was complicated by the
fact that she was not widely known in the literary
community. She had had to rely on Griswold for
information more than she would have liked, and despite
Griswold's complaint that she did not acknowledge the
extent of his help. May did mention her reliance on him in
her preface. Though she declared that the biographical
material for the volume was "generally obtained from the
direct sources of reliable information," she said that she
had been compelled on some occasions to "resort to printed
authorities." She went on to say that in the case of Mrs.
Lowell's notice she was "wholly indebted to Mr. Griswold,
whose politeness should be appreciated more highly, as he
is himself engaged upon a work of similar character" (May,
Preface, vii-viii). Her actual dependence on Griswold
was, however, much more extensive than this statement
would indicate.
Some of the poets to whom May applied refused to be
included in her book, probably due to her inexperience.
! May mentioned the fact in her preface, regretting "that
, one or two names, which she would gladly have inserted,
i
j have been omitted, in compliance with the wishes of those
' who had the only perfect right to dictate the omission"
I
}
I
257
(May, vii). Griswold delighted in the fact that some
i poets had refused May and reviewed May's book anonymously,
in the Home Journal, October 21 issue (Bayless 149).
May's book was not as successful as Griswold's or Read's,
but it was reprinted several times in the 1850's and 60's,
and was republished in 1876 under the title Pearls from
American Female Poets.
Not all of the reviews of Griswold's The Female Poets
of America were were written by Griswold partisans. Edgar
. Allan Poe reviewed it for the February 1849 issue of the
Southern Literary Messenger, giving perhaps the most
balanced presentation of the book's strengths and
weaknesses of any of the reviewers. He reviewed it in the
context of Griswold's other anthologies— The Poets and
Poetry of America, The Prose Writers of America, and The
Poets and Poetry of England— and was the only reviewer to
do so. Poe stressed the importance that Griswold's books
had had in summarizing the extant literature and praised
Griswold's "discriminative criticism" which was sometimes
to be found in these anthologies. At the same time he
stated that he did not consider The Female Poets of
America to be Griswold's best work. Poe preferred The
Prose Writers of America, a book "of which any critic in
the country might well have been proud." He said, "There
258
is not a weak paper in [The Prose Writers of America]; and
i
' some of the articles are able in all respects." In
I
i general Poe felt that Griswold's intellect, was "more at
home in Prose than Poetry," and that Griswold was "a
better judge of fact than fancy" (SLM XV, 126).
I Poe had high praise for Griswold, however, because he
| had included poets from the South and West, a thing that
Poe said "Nothern critics seem to be at great pains never
I to do" (126). Poe listed several women whom Griswold had
!
; included, "who have not had the good fortune to be born in
j the North," and lauded Griswold's courage in including
them. He went on to say,
Let our readers be assured that, (as
matters are managed among the four or five
different cliques who control our whole
literature in controlling the larger portion of
our critical journals,) it requires no small
amount of courage, in an author whose
subsistence lies in his pen, to hint, even, that
any thing good, in a literary way, can, by any
possibility, exist out of the limits of a
certain narrow territory." (126)
Unlike some of the critics to review The Female Poets
; of America Poe had clearly read and analyzed Griswold's
' work carefully. Having done so, he took the unusual step
I
of ranking for his audience the poets whose work he felt
was most significant. Leaving out Maria Brooks whom he
had praised already, Poe ranked them:
259
Mrs. Osgood— very decidedly first— then
Mrs. Welby, Miss Carey, (or the Misses Carey,)
Miss Talley, Mrs. Whitman, Miss Lynch, Miss
Frances Fuller, Miss Lucy Hooper, Mrs. Oakes
Smith, Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. Hewitt, Miss Clarke,
Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Warfield, (with
her sister, Mrs. Lee,) Mrs. Eames and Mrs.
Sigourney. If Miss Lynch had as much
imagination as energy of expression and artistic
power, we would place her next to Mrs. Osgood.
The next skilful merely [sic] of those just
mentioned, are Mrs. Osgood, Miss Lynch and Mrs.
Sigourney. The most imaginative are Miss Cary,
Mrs. Osgood, Miss Talley and Miss Fuller. The
most accomplished are Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. Eames,
Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Oakes Smith.
The most popular are Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Oakes
Smith and Miss Hooper. (127)
Poe was one of the first critics to see the
usefulness of an anthology in creating a literary
hierarchy. Poe's critical pronouncements were made
possible by the anthology that Griswold had produced. By
seeing the work of these, poets lined up side by side Poe
could render a comparative analysis, and pass his opinions
on to a public that had the anthology before them and
could also judge for themselves. This was precisely the
function that the anthology came to fulfill. After The
Female Poets of America was published the public began to
look at women's poetry more critically and the women's
literary market became more hierarchical. Griswold's The
Female Poets of America, along with the anthologies by
| Read and May, began the establishment of a literary
I hierarchy in women's poetry which ranked not only
i
i
260
individual poets above others, but also established a set
of values by which women's poetry would be judged.
Women's poetry was the kind of poetry found in these
anthologies; poetry that fell outside of these parameters
was unacceptable. It was this literary hierarchy that
made it difficult for later poets who did not follow
established norms to be published. Emily Dickinson's
poetry, for example, could not be accepted in her lifetime
because it did not fit these established norms.
Poe did not approve of everything Griswold had done
in The Female Poets of America. He felt that Griswold had
not done full justice to "one or two of the ladies,"
particularly Susan Archer Talley who wrote for the
Southern Literary Messenger. He also cited what he felt
were "the most glaring omisions" of the book as those of
Mrs. C. F. Orne and Miss Mary Wells (Feb. 1849; Southern
Literary Messenger XV, 127). Overall, however, Poe had
praised the work of his old enemy, and Griswold, who was
aware of Poe's review, had to take the criticism as well
as he could for the time being.
Griswold had the opportunity two years later, after
Poe's death, to remedy these little criticisms that Poe
had included in his review. While Griswold was editing
I Poe's manuscripts for an 1850 edition of Poe's works, he
came across this old review and edited out small portions
■ that were critical of The Female Poets of America.
i
Griswold's omissions include a reference to his works as
"compilations." Griswold hated to be called a compiler
since he felt he was as much an author as the poets
themselves. Griswold also left out the reference to Susan
! Archer Talley as a contributor to the Southern Literary
i
Messenger, and he left out Poe's comment that C. F. Orne
28
and Mary Wells should not have been omitted.
Once The Female Poets of America was published
Griswold had to deal with those who had either been left
out of the work or had been criticized in the biographical
headnotes. One of the women he feared most in this regard
was Elizabeth Ellet. Griswold had been annoyed by the
fact that she had not acknowledged his help with her
recently published book, The Women of the American
Revolution. Perhaps as a result of that annoyance he
characterized her poetry unkindly in the biographical
sketch. He said:
i
I 28. A full treatment of Griswold's handling of Poe's
| review is to be found in the Poe Newsletter II, ii (1969)
| 35-37.
I
i
262
The poems of Mrs. Ellet do not perhaps
evince much of the inspiration of genius, nor
have they the freshness which distinguishes much
verse that is very inferior in execution; but
while we rarely perceive in them anything that
is striking, they, as well as her prose works,
are uniformly respectable. (FP 199)
| It is little wonder than Griswold was apprehensive
| when Ellet wrote to him on November 24, a month before his
t
volume would appear, saying,
The Editor of the North American Review
1 wants me to prepare an article forthwith on the
| "American Female Poets." Will not your
publishers send me a copy, now, if they have one
bound, that I can do it some justice! I will
promise not to lend it before publication. If
they have no copy ready perhaps they can let me
have the sheets immediately and the copy as soon
as it is ready. (Nov. 24, n.y., MB)
Griswold was understandably anxious about the
prospect of sending Ellet a copy of the manuscript which
had criticized her, especially for the purpose of having
her review it. He immediately wrote a letter to his
friend Whipple in a panic, enclosing Ellet's note.
Griswold told Whipple:
I have just read with surprise the
accompanying note from Mrs. Elllet. Is it
possible that Mr. Bowen [editor of the North
American Review] applied to her— one of the
subjects to be noted in the proposed article,
and of the whole list, the most prejudiced and
least competent, to write a review of Read's and
May's and my own books? If so, I wish him joy.
She may get wisdom where she can: my book shall
not go into her hands until it is published.
263
which will not be till the twentieth of
December.
The idea is laughable, ridiculous,
contemptible. Mrs. Ellet knows nothing of any
department of American literature, knows little
of any literature, and she has quarrels with
Osgood, Oakesmith, and others of the most
respectable of the female poets, which
disqualify her altogether for a discussion of
their merits. She is a vain, silly, conceited
woman, with a mere fluency in bad writing. I
can secure an article, by the author of that
paper in the Knickerbocker on the Prose Writers,
that would do infinite credit to the Review. I
would send you the author1s name, but that he
forbids me. I could refer Bowen to a dozen men
who understand the subject perfectly and are
willing to write for his customary pay, but for
Heaven’s sake dissuade him from this foolery of
employing Mrs. Ellet. All female authordom
cries out against it. You yourself will see, if
she does write, how feeble, sickly, commonplace,
splenetic, will be her twattle (RWG to Whipple,
[Nov. 25] [1848], MB).
Griswold reponded promptly to Mrs. Ellet's request
for information in a fashion that was not likely to smooth
over the situation. In a letter dated November 25
Griswold told Ellet:
Mr. Griswold declines to furnish Mrs. Ellet
with proof sheets or any early copy of his book
entitled The Female Poets of America.
It strikes him that the relations
heretofore existing between himself and Mrs.
Ellet should have prevented any application from
her on the subject.
Also, that being interested or joint author
of a [illegible] publication, she is by the
honorable principle debarred from reviewing my
book.
264
Also, that it is highly improper for a
person to write a review of a book, of which she
is herself one of the subjects. After the
publication of his volume it will be beyond his
control for purposes of reviewship, but he begs
to submit to Mrs. Ellet whether under the
circumstances she can, consistently with a
proper delicacy, attempt any public discussion
of its merits except under her proper name, so
that the animus she may exhibit may be properly
appreciated (RWG to Ellet, Nov. 25 [1848], MB).
‘ Griswold's suspicion that Bowen had not commissioned
Ellet to write the article was, indeed, correct. Ellet
was in the habit of writing to periodicals offering to
*
review recently published works. In fact, Ellet1s offer
to write the review may not have actually been accepted
when she wrote to Griswold for a copy of The Female
Poets. On November 28, four days after she had written to
. Griswold, Bowen sent a letter to Ellet accepting her offer
to write the review. He told her,
I should be pleased to receive from you an
article on the subject that you mention— The
Female Poets of America— though it is now too
late to have it inserted in the January number
of the N. A. Review. It could not be published
before April, but the MSS. should be sent to me
as early as Feb. 1st. It can be forwarded to
me, to the care of the publishers of the Review
in Boston. (Nov. 28, 1848, NNPM)
It Is possible, of course, that Ellet had been given
i
i
: the assignment earlier from an associate editor or staff
j person. She certainly acted as though she had been given
i
the authority to write the review. After receiving
265
Griswold's refusal of an advance copy, Ellet immediately
wrote the following letter to his publishers in order to
obtain a copy without Griswold:
I have engaged to furnish for the North
American Review an article on the "Female Poets
of America." If you will send me a copy of Mrs.
Sigourney's illustrated poems, and any other
lady's poems you would like noticed, I will
review them, and place Mrs. S’s book among those
at the head of the article. I wish to make the
work you are about to publish, edited by Dr.
Griswold the basis of my review; will you
therefore, let me have a copy as soon as one is
bound. Dr. G. says you will publish it the
Monday before Christmas, and that some copies
may be in readiness before. (Ellet to Carey and
Hart, Nov. 27, n.y., NHi)
Ellet's reference to Griswold, of course, made it appear
that she had both discussed her review with him and that
he had approved it. Carey and Hart did not send a copy at
once, and on December 14 Ellet wrote again saying, "I will
anticipate the book on the Female Poets, for the
appearance of which I am only waiting to write the Review"
29
(Ellet to Carey & Hart, Dec. 14, 1848, CSmH).
Griswold's attempt to dissuade Bowen from letting
Ellet write the review was unsuccessful. Whipple wrote to
Griswold on January 6 after having talked to Bowen, and
explained,
29. Ellet misdated this letter as 1846.
266
the only answer he vouchsafes is, that he
made the engagement with Mrs. Ellet before the
book was published, and before she could see
what was said in it about herself. It is all
nonsense to pretend to do anything with Bowen
when his mind is once fixed. It is like trying
to puff back a hurricane with the breath of
human nostrils . . . (Passages 233)
| Whipple told Griswold that he should rely on Bowen's
good judgment since Bowen would "not allow any clique
injustice to be perpetrated in his Review" (Passages
i 233). Whipple also felt that Griswold should patch up his
quarrel with Ellet. He told Griswold:
I am sorry to find that you and the
| New-Yorkers are on such bad terms with Mrs.
Ellet. I always thought that she was considered
by you all a lady of great ability,
acquirements, and excellence. That truth is, I
have no patience with the New York literati.
They are all the time quarreling with each
other. Why not kiss and be friends? You have a
precious lot of feuds on your own hands. A
plague on both your houses, say I .
(Passages 233)
One more incident occurred to keep Griswold's fear of
Mrs. Ellet stirred up. An anonymous review of The Female
f Poets of America turned up in Neal1s Gazette which
I
, criticized the anthology. Griswold immediately assumed
i
j that Ellet had written it, and sent off an angry letter to
| her on December 30 which said:
I
i Mr. Griswold requests the attention of Mrs.
Ellet to the enclosed article, which appeared in
Neal's Gazette. Mr. Griswold learns from a
friend who called at the office of that paper
267
that it was written not by Mrs. Neal, the
editor, but by Mrs. Ellet, whose conduct in
regard to Mr. Griswold wil be fully exposed to
the public unless that article is promptly and
fully disavowed. (Dec. 30, n.y., MB)
Ellet wrote back on January 4 denying the authorship
of the review. She told Griswold:
Mrs. Ellet was much surprised by the
receipt yesterday of Dr. Griswold's note of Dec.
30th. She had not seen the article in Neal's
Gazette, nor does she know by whom it was
written. It is certainly unjust to charge upon
her the responsibility of an anonymous notice
treating of published works.
Ellet told Griswold that despite the fact that she had
quarelled with him it would not affect her treatment of
him in her review. She assured him that she was
"incapable of the weakness of allowing her judgment of a
work to be influenced by any private sense of injury, or
of the wickedness of permitting any grievance to affect
her public expression of opinion" (Jan. 4, n.y., MB).
The fact that the North American Review article was
not due out until April only made Griswold's suspense
; worse. He believed that Ellet had been writing anonymous
attacks on his book as well as talking down his book among
i her friends. Griswold called these attacks the "assaults
I
, of the devil" in a letter to Fields (Jan. 14, 1849,
1 CSmH). rHe also believed that Ellet had known ahead of
268
time what he intended to print about her in the
anthology. Since Ellet had made a practice of visiting
Griswold in his office at the New-York Historical Society
while he was working on the book, Griswold believed, as he
told Fields, that she contracted to do the review
"immediately after seeing my proof sheets embracing her."
He went on to reassure his friend that "nothing of mine
dear James but proof sheets, or sheets printed, ever did
embrace her" (Jan. 14, 1849, CSmH, emphasis RWG's).
One of the anonymous reviews of The Female Poets of
America probably did come from Ellet. A review appeared
in the January 27 issue of the Literary World which
Griswold believed Ellet had written. According to
Griswold, Ellet had taken the review to several
periodicals before it was accepted. Griswold told Fields,
"She carried it to the Tribune, but Bayard [Taylor], sans
peur as sans reproche, said Griswold was his friend; then
she carried it to Morris, for the Home Journal, but that
great commander respectfully declined it. Duyckinck
thought it 'clever'" (RWG to Fields, [c. Feb.] [1849],
CSmH).
This review in the Literary World attacked Griswold
from beginning to end. It began by discussing Griswold's
269
! claim to the "first discovery of the 'female poets' and
and exclusive property in them thenceforward" (Jan. 27,
1849; IV, 78). The article debunked Griswold's assertion
. that his Gems from American Female Poets was the first
; anthology of American women poets by reminding readers of
Sarah Josepha Hale's Ladies Wreath and pointing out
Griswold's dependence on Hale's collection. It criticized
Griswold for his censure of Thomas Read and Caroline May
as usurpers of Griswold's territory, since in all
; probability "neither was aware of Dr. Griswold's design of
preparing a volume on the subject which occupied their
attention, no such intention having been publicly
announced" (78). The article also criticized Griswold's
method of gathering materials for his volume, his
borrowing from other sources without giving credit, and
the inclusion of poets who had not given him permission to
use their work.
This review is almost certainly by Ellet. One of the
criticisms made in the review is that Griswold had
obtained the material for the memoir of Mercy Warren from
a source he did not acknowledge. In fact, Griswold had
gotten most of that material from Ellet's Women of the
Revolution which Ellet had been working on while Griswold
was compiling The Female Poets of America and which was
270
published in the summer of 1848. The fact that the
reviewer was aware of this borrowing, plus the evidence
that Griswold received from Bayard Taylor and George
Morris that Ellet was hawking this review of him,
establishes the review as hers.
Ellet treated Griswold very differently in the North
American Review. The article finally appeared, as Bowen
had said it would, in the April 1849 issue, and when it
did it was a distinct anticlimax. Ellet had not really
"reviewed" any of the three anthologies of women's
poetry. She had instead taken up the topic of women's
poetry in America, giving a summary of its history and
showing its progress. It was a long article, twenty-six
pages long, and only the final paragraph was spent
evaluating the work of the three anthologists. The last
paragraph read:
We must say a word concerning the volumes
before us, which appear in a style of great
elegance. In general, much taste is displayed
in the selections, though each book has the
fault of including many whose claims to a rank
among poets are not established by any thing
they have published. In the smallest collection
are productions that might well have been
excluded. Miss Caroline May, herself a pleasing
writer of verse, has taken great pains in
collecting her facts from original and
trustworthy sources,— in every practicable
instance, from the writers themselves,— and in
writing clearly and with proper brevity, so as
to give all necessary information without
271
wearying the readier with minute details. Her
biographical notices are excellent, and her
critical estimates just and appropriate; they
are marked by a loving appreciation of merit and
graceful expression, that show her fitness for
the pleasing task she has undertaken. Mr.
Griswold's book is larger, containing not only
more names, but a more copious selection from
the writings of each poet. Some of the notices
evince considerable scholarship and literary
dexterity. Mr. Read has not entered into
biographical details, but contented himself with
brief critical remarks in introducing each
poet. His taste is shown not only as a critic,
but as an artist, in the engraved portraits of a
number of the lady writers from paintings by his
own hand. (April 1849; Worth American Review,
LXVIII, 435-436)
Though Griswold escaped any damage from Ellet's
article in The North American Review he did not get
through the spring unscathed. Another review appeared in
the March Democratic Review which had much greater power
to damage. This review struck at the very heart of why
Griswold's book had been published. In the preface to The
Female Poets of America, written under the influence of
opium, Griswold had put forward a comparison of "male"
poetic genius and "female" poetic genius, as forces which
were essentially dissimilar. The preface began:
It is less easy to be assured of the
genuineness of literary ability in women than in
men. The moral nature of women, in its finest
and richest development, partakes of some of the
qualities of genius; it assumes, at least the
similitude of that which in men is the
characteristic or accompaniment of the highest
grade of mental inspiration. We are in danger,
therefore, of mistaking for the efflorescent
272
energy of creative intelligence, that which is
only the exuberance of personal "feelings
unemployed." We may confound the vivid
dreamings of an unsatisfied heart, with the
aspirations of a mind impatient of the fetters
of time, and matter and mortality. . . . The
most exquisite susceptibility of the spirit, and
the capacity to mirror in dazzling variety the
effects which circumstances or surrounding minds
work upon it, may be accompanied by no power to
originate, nor even, in any proper sense, to
reproduce. It does not follow, because the most
essential genius in men is marked by qualities
which we may call feminine, that such qualities
when found in female writers have any certain or
just relation to mental superiority. The
conditions of aesthetic ability in the two sexes
are probably distinct, or even opposite. Among
men, we recognise his nature as the most
thoroughly artist-like, whose most abstract
thoughts still retain a sensuous cast, whose
mind is the most completely transfused and
incorporated into his feelings. Perhaps the
reverse should be considered the test of true
art in woman, and we should deem her the truest
poet, whose emotions are most refined by
reason. . . . (FP 3)
The reviewer disagreed with Griswold's assertion that
women were inspired in a fashion different from men and
wrote in the article:
With whatever we understand of the first
page [of the preface] we are forced to
disagree. Mr. Griswold writes: It is less easy
to be assured of the genuineness of literary
merit in women than in men."
Denied— We cannot allow him that comfort.
There is but one stamp and but one standard of
literary merit. This theme is lucidly developed
thus:
"The moral nature of woman, in its finest
and richest development, partakes of some of the
same qualities of genius; it assumes at least
I 273
I
I
the similitude of that which in men is the
characteristic or accompaniment of the highest
grade of mental inspiration"—
Such as what, for instance?
"We are in danger therefore of mistaking
for the efflorescent energy of creative
intelligence, that which is only the exuberance
of personal feelings unemployed. We may
confound the vivid dreamings of an unsatisfied
heart, with the aspirations of a mind impatient
of the fetters of time and matter, and
mortality. That may seem to us the abstract
imagining of a soul rapt into sympathy with a
purer beauty and higher truth than earth and
space exhibit, which in fact shall be only the
natural craving of affections undefined and
wandering."
Does this mean that the vagaries of a
nervous woman resemble cleverness in an
accomplished man? ....
We presume we catch a glimpse of the
author's point, though it is so obscured by
polysyllables that we cannot be certain. It is
that a poem should be judged of by the sex of
the writer. But this is not so. What has a
reader to do with the gender of verse? Surely
there is no such thing as male poetry and female
poetry. (March 1849; Democratic Review XXIV,
232-233)
But Griswold did believe that male poetry and female
poetry were essentially different and he continued to
believe it until the end of his life. In 1855, only two
years before his death he got into a row with Richard
Henry Stoddard who had been his friend for a decade.
Stoddard had written a review critical of Alice Cary's
poetry and published it in The Albion. Griswold saw the
274
review and vigorously defended his protegee. The
' essential difference between Griswold and Stoddard was
1 that Griswold wanted to treat women's poetry
i
I .
! deferentially, chivalrically, though he thought it
(
I inferior, and Stoddard wanted to treat it on an equal
' basis with men's poetry, though this meant treating it
’ critically. Griswold was furious with Stoddard for
! criticizing Cary, and he sent off an angry letter to
j Fields saying: "It is not true, certainly, that 'genius
is of no sex' as [Stoddard] urges. The domain of the
female mind is sentiment, and its law is refinement. In
this respect the poetry of woman, at least, has sex, and
. is offensive when it has not" (Feb. 10, 1855, CSmH).
Griswold's The Female Poets of America was based on
the idea that women's poetry was essentially different
from men's. Griswold referred more than once in his
preface to the "feminine" aspects of the poetry in the
i
■ book, and the "feminine" characteristics of those who
wrote it. He felt that an essential strength of American
; culture was the deference that it manifested toward
i women. That deference, he said, "is so pervading and so
j peculiar, as to amount to a national characteristic; and
it ought to be valued and vaunted as the pride of our
freedom, and the brightest hope of our history" (FP 4).
i
275
I
Griswold's "deference" toward women manifested itself
in the language he used to describe their work in the
biographical headnotes. Though he had told Fields that
women poets in America did not merit their reputation and
that their work was mainly "sauzle" (March 7, 1847, CSmH),
he represented them very differently in The Female Poets
of America. Griswold was master of the gushing style so
popular in the literary journals of the 1840's and he
showered his female poets with adjectives, praising the
"delightful fancy" of their poetry, their "lyrical
powers," and their "feminine genius." But very frequently
his lavish praise of the poets was undercut with either
criticism or sarcasm.
For example, Griswold said of Hannah Gould in the
biographical headnote that "Her most distinguishing
characteristic is sprightliness. Her poetical vein seldom
rises above the fanciful, but in her vivacity there is
both wit and cheerfulness" (FP 45). Though Griswold has
described Gould's poetry with complimentary language, the
overall impression of Gould's poetry is that it is
shallow. Sprightliness, vivacity, wit, and cheerfulness
are not high poetic values. Griswold also said that
Gould's poetry "seldom rises above the fanciful," turning
276
"fanciful" into a second-class adjective to indicate that
a poet has reached no higher.
Griswold's comments about the women poets
teeter-tottered between claims on their behalf and
modifications of those claims. Griswold would assert, for
example, that a poet displayed a remarkable originality
and then add that her poems were not carefully polished.
Griswold liked to balance the strength of a woman's poetry
by assuring the public of its sweetness. What he said of
Mary Stebbins is a typical example:
Her compositions in this collection show
that she has a fine and well-cultivated
understanding, informed with womanly feeling and
a graceful fancy, and they are distinguished in
an unusual degree for lyrical power and harmony
as well as for sweetness of versification. (FP
157)
Griswold begins by asserting Stebbins' "fine and
well-cultivated understanding," but then goes on to modify
his assertion by referring to her "womanly feeling and
graceful fancy." To Griswold a well-cultivated
understanding was a manly virtue which in a woman was most
properly counterbalanced with the feminine qualities of
feeling and fancy. Thus also Stebbins1 manly
characteristics of "lyrical power and harmony" were
properly balanced by her "sweetness of versification."
Griswold's method of advance and retreat was plain
enough to the critic from The Democratic Review who
declared in annoyance:
Except in the Essay on the Over-Soul, and
in the Dial, that Asylum of 'prose run mad,1 we
have never met with any sentences so hard to
crack as some of Mr. Griswold's. You think,
after a close examination of his transcendental
phraseology that you apprehend him, when the
next sentence annihilates your presumption, and
unsettles your ideas of the signification of
English words. Mr. Griswold says of Mrs. W— ,
one of the bards:— 'There are in the writings of
Mrs. W— few indications of creative power,' .
'but her fancy is lively, and she has
introduced into poetry some new and beautiful
imagery.1 We should have said before this, that
to introduce into poetry new and beautiful
imagery, showed a deal of creative power; to say
nothing of possessing a lively imagination
besides. Sterne would have classed Mr.
Griswold's style among the best specimens of the
'lambent pupillability of slow, low, dry chat.'
Perhaps language is not only the art of
concealing one's thoughts, as Talleyrand said,
but also the art of pretending to have them.
(March 1849; Democratic Review XXIV, 233)
Griswold seemed bent on asserting that the women in
his volume had poetical power, but he was just as keen on
reassuring the public that they were really just women
after all, full of domestic virtues, attached to home and
family, and content with their position in life. For
example, when commenting on the work Emeline S. Smith,
Griswold remarked, "Her distinguishing characteristics are
a religious delight in nature, and a contentment with home
affections and pleasures, which in one form or another are
the material of the finest poetry of women" (FP 250). Of
Fanny Osgood he said, "She is at times forcible and
original, and is frequently picturesque; but throughout
all appears the poet, and the affectionate and
enthusiastic woman" (FP 272-73). He said of Jessie
McCartee, "All her compositions that we have read breathe
of beauty, piety, and content" (FP 131). He commended
both Jane T. Worthington and Susan Pindar for the "womanly
feeling" in their poetry (FP 260 and 343).
Griswold was as interested in the domestic side of
his poets' lives as he was in the professional, and he
generally included information on the poet's husband or
father in the biographical sketch, even when the
information had little to do with the poet's work. In
some cases the poet would give up poetry upon her
marriage, a fact that Griswold was fond of noting. As
Griswold remarked of Louisa J. Hall, who married in 1840,
she was after that time "too much interested in domestic
affairs, and in the duties which grow out of her relation
to her husband's society, to bestow much further attention
upon literature" (FP 111). Griswold also made much of the
fact that during a period of four or five years when
279
Hal11s eyesight failed she missed her needle [emphasis
Griswold's] more than her pen (FP 111).
Griswold had little patience with those poets who saw
themselves in other than domestic roles. For example, in
the biographical headnote for Phillis Wheatley Peters, he
described her unhappy marriage at length, attributing the
blame more to the wife than the husband. He assured his
readers that
[Mr.] Peters in his adversity was not very
unreasonable in demanding that his wife should
attend to domestic affairs— that she should cook
his breakfast and darn his stockings; but she
too had certain notions of 'dignity,1 and
regarded as altogether beneath her such
unpoetical occupations. (FP 31)
Essentially Griswold thought of the poets in his
collection as professional wives and mothers, and amateur
poets. He expressed as much in the biographical headnote
for Elise Justine Bayard:
A lady of leisure, fortune, and general
accomplishment, is not likely to bestow any very
severe study upon the art of poetry; but the
amateur votary in this instance has shown a
vigor of thought, emotion, and expression, in
some of her productions, which gives the highest
promise of what she may accomplish, should she
devote her fine intelligence to literature" (FP
357).
The reader is tempted to ask what Bayard was doing if not
devoting "her fine intelligence to literature."
280
Griswold saw distinct limits as to how far women
could succeed as poets. Thus Margaret Puller was ranked
as "among the first authors of her sex" (FP 251, emphasis
mine). Anne Bradstreet was "superior to any poet of her
sex who wrote in the English language before the close of
the seventeenth century" (FP 17). The poems of Maria
James would "bear a very favorable comparison with the
compositions of any of the 'uneducated poets' whose names
are celebrated in Mr. Southey's fine essay upon this
subject" (FP 67).
One of the serious problems for women poets in the
1840's was, of course, their lack of a scholarly
education. The critic who reviewed Griswold's book in The
Democratic Review saw how women were educated and blamed
women's education for the poor quality of their poetry,
saying that
The education generally received by women,
by American women in particular, is deficient,
not in French and worsted-work, but in training
of the reasoning faculties, and in sound,
practical views of the world. The fair one is
not taught to feel interested in the every-day
business of mankind, or to think upon it.— She
is instructed to believe it becoming to know
nothing about politics or newspapers; all that
she leaves to husband or brother. . . . Most
literary ladies protest against the state of
moral subjection in which their sisters seem
delighted to dwell; but they cannot free
themselves from the trammels. One sees the want
281
of the practical in their productions (March
1849; Democratic Review XXIV, 235-36).
The article in The Democratic Review spent the next
several pages pointing out significant blunders in both
meaning and prosody that the women had made in their
poetry through lack of care and lack of education.
Griswold also preferred poets who were better
educated and who interested themselves in subjects that
were more philosophical than domestic. His favorite woman
poet was Maria Brooks, who wrote long, elaborate,
philosophical poems. He also spoke with approbation of
the poets who attempted to write poetry that did not
reflect the domestic sphere in which most woman poets
lived. For example, he praised the poems of Estelle Lewis
saying that they were "of considerable length and of a
more ambitious design than most of the compositions of our
female poets" (FP 263). He praised the work of Frances H.
Green by saying she had "perhaps entered more largely than
any of her countrywomen into discussions of religion,
philosophy, and politics" (FP 123). Yet these remarks
also indicated that though these poets might differ
somewhat from the norm, the typical poem by a woman poet
would deal with narrower subject matter than one would
expect of a man. And, for the most part, Griswold seemed
to approve of the education provided for women which
caused their poetry to be so narrowly focused. He praised
Emily Judson for being "thoroughly educated in the
sciences suitable to her sex" (FP 241). He also commended
the mother of Elizabeth Ferguson whose "chief care" was
"to educated her [daughter's] mind and heart so that she
should illustrated by her intelligence and virtue the
highest grade of female character" (FP 24).
The major objection that the critic in The Democratic
Review made toward The Female Poets of America was that
the book was too full of poets and poetry that were
unworthy of the name. The critic lamented,
[I]t is a poor business to break a
butterfly upon a wheel, one which we should not
have undertaken as long as such effusions had
remained confined to a newspaper corner, or a
hard-to-fill page of our own and brother
monthlies; but presented to us in a solid and
durable shape, and announced as a body of
literature exhibiting 'a pervading aspiration
for the beautiful,' we feel bound to say that
the beautiful has not been attained, and to show
why we think so. It is the duty of the Critical
journals to protest against stupidity, and
against what is worse, the self-sufficient
middling class. Utter incapability, when not
amusing, excites our anger or contempt; but
placid mediocrity stagnates and leaves us to
perish of ennui. The kingdom of fools is a
pleasanter land to dwell in than the kingdom of
fogies. . . . We object to Mr. Griswold as a
critic. Because he brought out this book. The
reading-life of the oldest is short and full of
weak eyes, and shelves groan with first-rate
books. Has a man any right to endeavor to make
283
his fellows waste precious time over 'Types of
Heaven,1 'Dream Melodies,' and 'Soul Music'?
Verses are not necessary to existence, or even
to enjoyment. Men could survive to a green old
age without having read a stanza. An
indifferent picture is of value here, because
our standard of painting is low; but in poetry,
the great masters are within our reach, and poor
verses are poor indeed. Give us good, or none
at all. Editors as well as writers should
ponder upon the saying of the King of Travancore
to the Dutch Ambassador: 'Be not tedious, life
is short. . . . '
We may have been tedious, but we do not
think we have been unjust. It is our duty and
the duty of our brethren to shut the doors
against poetasters, and to chalk 'no mediocrity
on the outside panel.' We can get the good, if
we refuse to be pleased with the passable. If
we cannot, let us have none. Above all, let us
keep before us the important fact, that geese
are not swans, not even American geese, and that
verses and rhymes do not constitute poetry. The
donkey was twice as asinine as before when he
donned the lion's skin. And let Mr. Griswold,
if he brings out a new edition for the
California market, modify the title, and,
borrowing an expressive word from the Turkish,
call it the Bosh-Book, or the Female Poets of
America. (March 1849; The Democratic Review
XXIV, 240-41)
It is difficult to attribute reviews in the 1840's
since very few of them were signed. It seems quite
possible, however, that this Democratic Review article was
written by James Russell Lowell. Lowell was contributing
articles to the Democratic Review quite frequently during
this period, and he did not have a high opinion of
| Griswold as an editor. In Lowell's A Fable for Critics
I
| (1848) he referred to Griswold as a gooseherd as well as a
284
goose, a reference that sounds strikingly similar to the
closing passage in the Democratic Review article. If
Lowell is the author, it is doubly interesting that he is
reviewing The Female Poets of America since his wife,
Maria White Lowell, is one of the poets included in
Griswold's work.
The modern critic is likely to agree with the
opinions of The Female Poets of America expressed in The
Democratic Review. The reading public in 1849 did not.
Griswold's reputation was enhanced by the book. Fields
wrote to Griswold in February 1850, "I read no longer ago
than yesterday in a St. Louis paper that 'no man in
Am[erica] stands higher at the present time than R. W. G.
in public estimation" (Passages 260). The anthology went
into a second edition in the first year and a third
edition in 1850. Griswold's anthology far outsold its
competitors, and, in the main, Griswold was content with
its reception.
285
I
r
Chapter 6
The Widening Circle
It was important to Griswold that The Female Poets of
. America be as well received by the poets included in the
volume as by the general public. In most cases the poets
were friends and acquaintances, and Griswold had suffered
too much emotional trauma in his marriage to Charlotte
Myers to wish to rock his emotional boat any more
vigorously. The poets could also aid in the success of
the work. Their approval of The Female Poets of America
would help its sales among their friends and admirers.
Their disapproval, if it were vocal enough, could hurt
sales even among the general public. At all costs he
wished to avoid the sort of damaging confrontation he had
undergone with Mrs. Ellet.
Before published copies of The Female Poets of
America were available to the public, Griswold sent out
j printed copies of their selections to several of the major
j poets included in the work. These were sent as proof
i
| 286
I
sheets, though there is some evidence that they were
actually sent after the final copy of The Female Poets of
30
America had gone to press. Caroline Sawyer looked over
Griswold's work and told him in a letter, "I find the
proof quite correct" (n.d., MB). Sarah Helen Whitman also
found the "proof sheets" correct, but asked for his advice
on some small changes that might improve her poems
([18481, MB).
Only Lydia Sigourney responded at length. She wrote
the following letter to Griswold on December 29 in an
attempt to correct some errors that Griswold had copied
into his volume:
Mrs. Sigourney thanks Mr. Griswold, for his
enclosure of a few pages of his forthcoming
work, which he was good enough to send to her,
in a parcel just received from Carey and Hart,
and also for the kind opinions they express of
herself, and her writings—
— -Though they have scarcely the appearance
of proof sheets, she hopes it may not be too
late, to make the following typographical
alterations. The one of the greatest importance
occurs near the close of "Napoleon's Epitaph,"
where St. Helena is represented as
"sick at heart and gray
Neath the Pacific's smiling,"
30. Of the three letters, two responses are undated. Mrs.
Sigourney's response is dated Dec. 28, 1848.
287
It should be the Atlantic1s smiting.
She has seen several copies, where Pacific
had been substituted for Atlantic; but smiling
instead of smiting, mars the sense, as well as
the geography. (Dec. 29, 1848, MB)
Sigourney went on to point out several other changes that
should be made in her poems, but it is unclear whether
i
, Griswold had made mistakes in copying her poems, or
Sigourney wanted only to improve her poems before they
were finally printed.
Most of the women included in The Female Poets of
America had to wait until the work was published to see
what Griswold had said of them. Very few letters exist in
which the poets directly commented on the quality of
Griswold's work. The poets were understandably more
interested in the way Griswold had treated their work
specifically than in the general quality of the volume.
Those poets who felt that Griswold had praised them tended
to approve of the volume as a whole. For example,
Griswold had included Sarah Helen Whitman in the preface
i
to The Female Poets with three other poets as illustrating
! "as high and sustained a range of poetic art, as the
, female genius of any age or country can display" (FP
I 3-4). Whitman wrote to Griswold on February 13, thanking
I him for the "flattering allusion" in the preface, and
288
I assuring him of the quality of his work. She told
j Griswold, "Your book is I think likely to be perennial
while the others (I mean Buchanan Read's & Miss Caroline
May's) will I am afraid prove to be mere annuals— & be
laid on the shelf after the first season— " (Feb. 13,
n.y., PHi).
Elizabeth Kinney wrote a review of The Female Poets,
' which she sent to Griswold that he might look it over
(Kinney to RWG, Sept. 22, 1849, PHi). It is interesting
I
that Griswold raised no objection to having this poet
review The Female Poets of America when he had so
adamantly opposed Mrs. Ellet's review on the grounds of
conflict-of-interest.
Some of the poets preferred Read's anthology to
Griswold's, particularly when their portrait appeared
there. Elizabeth Kinney wrote to her son on October 8,
1848 to describe Caroline May's volume which had just
I
appeared, and to tell him about Griswold's and Read's
forthcoming volumes. Kinney was having her portrait
; painted by Read which considerably increased her interest
in his anthology. She told her son:
I
I As you may not have much opportunity to
learn what is going on in the literary-world, I
will tell you of three beautiful volumes that
make their bow to the public this Autumn. They
i
I
289
are all made up of collections from the "Female
Poets of America," but are issued by different
publishers, & edited by three different
individuals. One by Miss Caroline May of N.Y.
of whom I know nothing, (but suppose her to be
the sister of Miss Serena April,) is already
out, in which I see my own name. The others are
by Mr. Griswold— author of "The Poets of
America" — & Mr. Read, the poet-artist, who
lately painted my picture. Mr. Griswold's will
be published simultaneously in London & N. York,
as he says, in a letter to me, that he means to
show the authors abroad what his countrywomen
can do. He sent for some of my poems, & his
book will be out in a few weeks. Mr. Read's
work will be the most elegant volume ever
published in this country. It will contain ten
engraved portraits, from paintings by the artist
who edits it, made last winter in New York,
(among which your mother is to have an honored
place,) & be printed & bound in the choicest
manner. (Elizabeth Kinney to Edmund Clarence
Stedman, Oct. 8, 1848, NNC).
Kinney seems to have been less pleased with Read's book
when it appeared and the engraving of her was, as she put
it, "less like me than the painting." Overall she decided
that Read "was a better poet than artist, though painting
31
was his profession" (Kinney 143).
Not all of the poets included Griswold's volume were
happy with their treatment there. Julia Ward Howe found
that Griswold had chosen only a few of her poems and had
placed them far back in the book. She wrote to her fellow
| 31. Griswold's Female Poets of America was never published
in England.
290
; Bostonian, J. T. Fields, in October 1853: "I have not
j Griswold's Female Poets; can you supply the poems which
were buried in it?" (Oct. 9, [1853], CSmH, emphasis
Howe's). For the most part, however, the women who had
been included in Griswold's work were pleased to have
their work before the public, whether or not Griswold had
i
i been especially complimentary about their abilities. The
i poets who suffered were those that had been left out of
the work entirely. Within a year or two following the
! publication of Griswold's The Female Poets of America. it
became clear that his volume was considered the standard
| work on the subject and that to be excluded from it was a
, serious blow to a poet's career.
Jane Ermina Locke was one of the poets whom Griswold
had excluded from The Female Poets of America and she felt
the slight keenly. Locke was a relative-in-law of Fanny
Osgood (Bayless 151) and not much liked by cousin Fanny,
which may account for Griswold's leaving her out. Like
; Osgood, Locke was published extensively before The Female
Poets of America was compiled, including a collection of
I her work, entitled Miscellaneous Poems, published in 1842
I and a long poem, Boston published in 1846. When she was
i
not included in The Female Poets of America she was at
first bewildered at what she assumed might be an
291
r ~ ........
i oversight. She then saw Griswold's marked attentions to
Fanny Osgood. After The Female Poets of America was
published he helped Osgood publish her poetry in a
collected edition; after her death he published a memorial
volume honoring her.
Locke sent a letter to Mary Hewitt who did most of
the editorial work for Fanny Osgood's Memorial, submitting
two poems for inclusion in the Memorial. Locke's poems
never appeared in the volume. Locke then wrote to Hewitt
to complain at her having been left out (Jan. 6, 1851,
MB). Hewitt responded to Locke's letter, indicating that
Locke's poems had been left out, apparently at Griswold's
32
request. Locke responded bitterly to the news:
I thank you, dear Madam, for the kindness
and promptness with which you have answered my
note of the 6th ins. especially do I thank you
inasmuch as you inform me that the cause of the
omission [of Locke's work for the Memorial) into
which I, with some anxiety, enquired is
precisely what JE believed it, and yet why I so
believed, I can hardly tell except, that I at
times have had, as by intuition, a sort of
weird-like perception of hidden truths startling
to myself! Still so utterly and entirely a
stranger as I am to Mr. Griswold, I cannot
account for the injustice, unkindness and wrong
which seems like design with which he pursues
me. I have no feelings of unkindness toward
him,— I have never had,— and all I know of him
may be told in few words and apologize in some
32. This is inferred from Hewitt's second letter.
i
292
degree for my own feelings. Of the publication
of his "Female Poets" I was entirely ignorant
until it was announced from the press. My own
name was not there. I secretly felt, I confess,
that it should have been, all who knew me felt
the same, as I was variously assured. But I did
not blame him, for I presumed it was an
inadvertence, as I was a stranger to him, a
volume of Poems of 290 pp. I had published
having run thro' the first edition without ever
requiring a notice from the New York press. I
did not regard it then as I have since, for I
did not see the influence that such an omission
would have and has had on my reputation; no— not
only my reputation as a poet but on my claim to
consideration as such, in ways that I cannot now
mention, but which with my extremely delicate
health (for thro' my life nothing but stern
mental energy has kept me out in the world), and
all too sensitive heart, with an irrepressible
— shall I call it Genius?— struggling for
recognition, if nothing more, despite my
determined efforts many a time to tread it out
from my soul, I say this influence under these
considerations has made me often pause, and
faint, and despair,— and earnestly pray heaven
to avert from my children the price of this
world-coveted gift, which for myself I early
craved, but which I have learned to believe is
woman1s curse. Still pride and delicacy forbade
me to complain nor did I ever speak of it to my
nearest friend, until many of the very persons
whose names Mr. G. had included in his book,
expressed to me their surprise and
dissatisfaction both verbally and by letter as I
can at this moment show, at what they deemed an
injustice from him to me. Even this I felt it
would illy befit me to complain of it, or
scarcely to assent to their words. But as time
passed on I felt more and more the effect; as
[The Female Poets of America! was taken for a
standard reference. (Locke to Hewitt, Jan. 13
[1851], MB)
After The Female Poets of America was published Locke
wrote to Griswold, as she said,
293
for the double purpose of letting him know
that there was such a person in existence (for I
did not now that he had recognized the fact,)
and to bequeath to him a manuscript work of much
labor which I had already prepared for
publication. (Locke to Hewitt, Jan. 13, 1851,
MB) .
Fortunately, Locke did not enclose the manuscript, for
Griswold never responded, even after a second letter was
sent.
Jane Locke was not the only poet to feel envy of
other poets whom Griswold sponsored. Griswold's work on
The Female Poets of America and its subsequent publication
intensified the competition between women poets,
particularly those who lived in New York close to their
sources of publication. For example, Grace Greenwood and
Anne Lynch had a quarrel in mid-December of 1848, just
days before The Female Poets was due off the press, that
was almost certainly the result of tensions raised by
Griswold's work. Greenwood was an up-and-coming poet, who
enhanced her position in the women's literary community by
flattering those who were more established. Anne Lynch
was a widely-published prose writer, who had only recently
published a volume of poetry about which she felt some
uncertainty. Greenwood offended Lynch in what Greenwood
herself called an "audacious letter" by comparing Lynch to
Asphasia, the second wife of Pericles, well-known for her
294
! intelligence and cultivation, but also known as a
j courtesan (Greenwood to Lynch, Dec. 11, 1848, RPB-JH).
Greenwood's apology letter offended as much as the
; original insult when Greenwood took up the topic of a
i
i
; review of Lynch's volume. Greenwood said,
I have just been reading the notice of your
poems in the Home Journal,— by Willis is it
not? . . . I would not have your glorious
poetry spoilt by the double-refined perfectness
* of which he speaks, for the world. I think he
does not begin to do you justice. Your poetry
speaks a language which he does not understand,
for it is not spoken in "Japonica-dom"— was
never heard at Gore House. He would dam your
Ceastatian-springs "with faint praise," but the
I sweet waters will burst their barriers, never
fear. Thank heaven, his opinions are not
decisions!" (Dec. 11, 1848, RPB-JH)
Greenwood went on to say, "I have always received
[Willis'] opinions upon my own poems, as Gospel, but this
criticism on yours, rouses me, as I know that you possess
abundantly what I have always wanted— careful elaboration
and artistic finish" (Dec. 11, 1848, RPB-JH).
I
I
j Lynch apparently wrote a firm letter back to
j Greenwood, indicating her annoyance at Greenwood's
I
! patronizing attitude. Greenwood wrote back hurriedly.
Your letter of the 15th had given me some
pain, perhaps it is salutary however. Ah me,
all seems in confusion between us two! I have
been foolish, expecting, presuming, and all I
can say is forgive me, and yet again, forgive
295
me. If you could but know my morbid
sensitiveness to like to dislike from you. I am
as jealous as a silly young lover. I tell the
simple truth when I say that I would prize your
love higher than that of any other woman living"
(Dec. 19, 1848, PSt).
Sometimes jealousy between women poets could be
traced to Griswold1s apparent favor or disfavor. After
The Female Poets of America was published, Griswold felt
less compelled to promote the work of women poets in
general and was content to concentrate on his favorites.
Though he was still very active as a literary mentor, he
felt less constrained to treat the poets equally. One of
Griswold's protegees who came to feel abandoned by him was
Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Though Griswold continued to write
reviews of her books after The Female Poets was published,
and remind her publishers of the royalties owed her, Oakes
Smith felt a distance between herself and her old mentor.
She sent the following poem to her friend, Sarah Helen
Whitman, who like Oakes Smith had felt the loss of
Griswold's regard:
Reply to Mrs. Whitman
I have no wish my lady bright,
To lend a grace to what I write,
[F?]or I would like to tell the story
Of our eclipsed Griswold['s] glory.
No more the Dr. walks in dreams
Where Grecian marble coldly gleams
Near flowing Brooks he's not the fit man
To wander by, and Mrs. Whitman
May go alone, in joy or woe
296
He thinks no more of her or Poe,—
No acorn green nor Oak tree myth
Can lure him back to Mistress Smith.
He quotes no verse of Fanny, fairy.
But keeps a broad of matters Cary,
Her chicken[s] alone, (I tell the common tale)
He takes to be a Nightingale
Indeed he thinks he [may?] inveigle,
The chicken, to a very eagle,
(I do not care for sense, a dime,
When I am bent on making rhyme
I do not let that couplet there
Create a sting nor yet a stare
Three unplucked buds, three Poet-spinsters
Three cherries, no, three heaven-born twin-stars
Are blooming, glowing every one,
To make the Dr. be undone,
To be! nay, is! and we are left
All high and dry like crafts bereft
Of tide, to carry us to see—
Poor Miss Brooks and you and me.
I'm so bereft of heart this letter—
May go in absense of a better—
I have not strength to sign my name
And send without as your note came.
(n.d., RPB-JH)
Despite the jealousies caused by the publication of
The Female Poets of America, one of the effects of the
book was to solidify the women's literary community.
Poets who had known each other only by the verses
published in the periodicals made a greater attempt to
know each other personally after the book came out. For
example, in April 1849, Lydia Sigourney in Hartford wrote
to Caroline Gilman in Charleston in the following manner:
My dear Mrs. Gilman, I have long been an
admirer of your writings, (as who has not?) and
felt for you that friendship which is not
dependent for existence on the sound of the
voice or the sight of the countenance. More
297
than once, I have thought to tell you so with
the pen, but have had little time to write
impulsive letters, being pressed with matters of
business & grave cares; and supposed it might be
the same with you. Yet as we grow older, and
feel that our time is short, I think we prize
more highly, intercourse with kindred minds,
whom we hope to meet, and know eternally. So, I
stretch out my hand to you, in the sunny South,
and wish you and yours all manner of good
things.
I hope your health is good & that your
literary avocations prosper. Allow me to
enclose to you a Notice of your sweet volume,
"Verses of a Life Time," which though not in the
habit of writing such things, I have taken
pleasure in preparing for one of our
periodicals. (April 11, 1849, CtY)
Similar offers of frienship were made between several of
the women included in Griswold's volume (Oakes Smith to
Kinney, Nov. 12, 1851, NNC; Sigourney to Lippincott, March
8, 1854, ViU).
Griswold's The Female Poets of America, along with
Read's and May's anthologies, intensified the public
interest in women's poetry, and many of the women included
in these anthologies found it easier to publish their
works from 1849 on. In the space of a few years after The
Female Poets of America was published at least eight poets
who had been included in Griswold's anthology published
volumes of their own. These were poets who had never
published individual volumes before. Catherine H. Esling
published The Broken Bracelet and Other Poems in 1850
298
which remained her only volume of poetry. Marguerite St.
Leon Loud's poems, Wayside Flowers, were published by
Fields in 1851. Sara Edgarton Mayo, who had died as
Griswold was working on The Female Poets, received
attention posthumously because of Griswold's volume. Her
husband had Selections from the Writings of Mrs. Sarah C.
Edgarton Mayo published in 1849 and it was republished in
1850, 1855, and 1857. Mary E. Lee was also published
postumously. The Poetical Remains of the Late Mary
Elizabeth Lee was published by S. Gilman [probably Samuel
Gilman, the husband of Sarah Gilman one of the women in
the volume] in Charleston in 1851. Alice and Phoebe Cary,
as well as Mary Stebbins, each had several volumes
published in the 1850's.
One of the most interesting examples of how The
Female Poets of America launched the careers of its poets
is the case of Susan Pindar. Before The Female Poets of
America was published Pindar had had no volumes of either
poetry or prose published, and was chiefly known by
Griswold as a contributor to The Knickerbocker. After The
Female Poets of America appeared, Pindar was able to get a
succession of books published, most of them prose works.
In 1849 she Fireside Fairies; or, Christmas at Aunt
Elsie1s was published; in 1850, Midsummer Fays. or the
299
Holidays at Woodleigh; and in 1852, The Legends of the
Flowers. All of these books went into second and
sometimes third editions. Though Pindar's books were not
collections of poetry, it seems clear that her reputation
as a prose writer was enhanced by her inclusion in a
poetry anthology. Pindar did, finally, have a volume of
her poetry published in the 1860's.
The Female Poets of America also boosted the careers
of established poets. Hannah Gould had several volumes of
poetry published in a row: New Poems, by Miss Hannah
Gould in 1850; The Diosma, a selection of Gould's poems
and others, in 1851; and The Mother's Dream and Other
Poems in 1853. Rebecca S. Nichols, who had not had a
volume published since 1844, had a second collection of
her poetry published entitled Songs of the Heart and the
Hearthstone in 1851. Estelle Lewis had two volumes of
poetry published in the 1840's, and followed them up in
the 1850's with Myths of the Mistrel in 1852, which went
into more than one edition. Sara J. Lippincott, under the
pseudonym "Grace Greenwood," had two prose volumes
published, Greenwood Leaves in 1850 and Haps and Mishaps
in 1854. Greenwood Leaves had six printings in the
1850's. One well-known prose writer, Emily Judson,
encouraged by her inclusion in Griswold's anthology, had
her only collection of poetry published in 1852.
A number of older volumes of poetry were republished
due to the increased interest in women's poetry that The
Female Poets of America created. Louisa Hall's Miriam, a
long dramatic poem, had been published in 1837 with
reprintings in 1838 and 1843. Griswold had featured this
poem in his selection for Hall in The Female Poets of
America. Miriam was republished in 1849 and a second
printing was made in 1850. Similarly, Cynthia Taggart had
had a volume of poetry published in 1834 which had not
gone into a second printing. It was republished in 1848,
while Griswold was compiling his volume. Anne Lynch's
volume of poems was published in 1848 and was reprinted In
1852 and 1853. Amelia Welby's collected poems had been
reprinted every year since their first publication in
1845. The Female Poets of America helped to keep Welby in
the public eye and her poems went into at least seven
editions in the 1850's.
Griswold continued to help women poets get their
works published even after his anthology was finished.
His reputation as the "Grand Turk" of the "female" poets
attracted the attention of a number of literary women.
301
Sarah Helen Whitman wrote to Griswold in February 1849
asking for advice on where she could get the best price
for the "new poem" she had discussed with him the summer
33
before in Providence (Feb. 13, n.y., PHi). Estelle
Lewis followed up on a bit of encouragement Griswold had
given her to publish her collected works. She wrote to
Griswold in April:
Were you sincere in advising me to collect
my poems for the coming Holidays? I do not feel
that I have either time, or courage to do it
unaided. If they are to be published for the
ensuing autumn, the Vignette about the artist,
and the manner of bringing out the poems should
be in progress. (April 4, n.y., MB)
Griswold often suggested in a casual fashion that a poet
should publish her collected works. In Mrs. Lewis' case
it is very likely that his suggestion was not sincere,
since he did not admire her poetry and had not praised it
in her biographical sketch. Lewis' letter indicates her
own doubts about Griswold's sincerity when she says: "I
have forgotten all you told me of 1 stilted ambition1
[emphasis Lewis'], since the collecting of my works is
your own proposition" (April 4, n.y., MB).
33. This letter was almost certainly written in 1849 since
Griswold had visited Whitman in the summer of 1848.
302
Griswold also received a letter from Frances Fuller,
who with her sister Metta, was hoping to have her poems
published by a Mr. Broekelbank. Fuller wanted Griswold to
intercede with Broekelbank who had kept their poems for
two months without telling her whether they would be
published or not (Fuller to RWG, July 14, 1850, MB).
Fuller also encouraged Griswold to send contributions to
the magazine which she and her sister were about to
publish in Michigan. Samuel Gilman wrote to Griswold on
behalf of himself and his wife, Sarah Gilman, who had been
included in The Female Poets. Both of the Gilmans were
anxious for their works to be republished, and Dr. Gilman
wanted to get Griswold's aid and advice (Samuel Gilman to
RWG, Nov. 28, 1851, MB). Mrs. Gilman wrote a supporting
letter, asserting tongue-in-cheek: "I consider that I
have a better chance for your consideration than [Dr.
Gilman], inasmuch as I rank myself among the forlorn
literary dames to whom you have proved yourself a preux
chevalier, already" (Sarah Gilman to RWG, Dec. 9. 1851,
MB) .
Griswold continued to receive requests for aid well
into the 1850's. When Katherine Ware took a trip to
Europe in 1854 she left behind a manuscript so that
303
Griswold could find her a publisher (Bayless 228).
Similarly, Mary Ann Hanmer Dodd wrote to Griswold in
January 1854 in hopes that he would find her a publisher,
and in general, increase her chances for fame. She wrote
to Griswold:
It is not so much my slight acquaintance
with Dr. Griswold, as his reputation for
kindness towards writers less famed and
fortunate than himself, that encourages me to
address him. It has been often said that my
writings were not known and appreciated as they
might be, if not confined to a denominational
paper and published almost exclusively among
Universalists. Wishing to make the most of my
little talent, and to become as famous as
possible, I have prepared a little work for
children; consisting of short articles, mostly
stories, both in prose and verse; desiring to
get it published in New York. (Jan. 11, 1854,
MB)
Dodd sent along the manuscript asking Griswold to look it
over and give an opinion.
Griswold also received requests from women whom he
had not published in The Female Poets of America. Because
he had included so many little-known poets in his book, he
gave hope to many unknown poets. Mary M. Burbank's letter
is a typical request for fame. She wrote to Griswold of a
manuscript that she wished to publish and which she
planned to send to him after certain "embellishments" had
been made on the text. Her manner to Griswold was very
304
subservient, and she told him, "I have a presentiment,
that you think me too obscure a writer to warrant or hope
for my success; in that you fear I am unwisely seeking for
fame, & should thereby be deluded. . (May 13, n.y.,
MB). She referred, however, to Griswold's "kind
consideration of young efforts," and his "knowledge of the
trials of an author" in the hopes that he would assist her
(May 13, n.y., MB).
The poets that Griswold was most anxious to publish
after The Female Poets of America appeared were Alice Cary
and Fanny Osgood. Griswold bought out the collected poems
of the Cary sisters and Fanny Osgood in 1850. Alice Cary
continued to interest Griswold as a writer for the rest of
his life, and he was heavily involved in many of the
things she published. In 1852 Griswold tried to publish a
volume of Alice's prose. He wrote to Whittier in the
hopes that this popular poet would write a preface for the
volume and thus enhance its sales. Whittier approved of
the plan to publish Alice's prose, but had to refuse
because of his ill health. He went on to tell Griswold:
If my opinion, however, could have any
weight with your public here I have no
hesitation in saying that it is not often that
so rich and valuable material is offered for an
American book, as might be prepared from the
prose sketches of Alice Cary. I am not able to
do justice to her or myself, no; and on that
305
1 ground must decline writing a preface; but, I do
not think well of such things. The public look
upon prefaces of this kind as an attempt to pass
off, by aid of a known name, what otherwise
would not pass current. This would do injustice
to such a writer as Alice Cary. She can stand
by herself, on her own original merits. Let me
know if anything which I can do is needed to
facilitate the publication. (Oct. 10, 1851, MB)
, Whittier had confidence in Alice as a prose writer, but
not as a poet. He cautioned Griswold, "I think if I were
Alice I would leave out all poetical quotations— as a
general thing they injure and weaken the effect of her
; admirable prose" (Oct. 10, 1851, MB).
Subsequently, Alice Cary did publish more prose than
poetry, but several volumes of her poetry appeared in the
1850's. Griswold sponsored her Lyra and Other Poems
(1852), Clovernook Children (1852), and a volume of her
collected poems (1854). Alice's editors frequently
conducted her business through Griswold, keeping him
abreast of the progress of her publications, notifying him
of payment to Alice (William Wallace Warden to RWG, Dec.
27, 1852, MB), and sometimes cautioning him to delay the
: publication of a manuscript, as Fields once did (Fields to
RWG, Aug. 11, 1854, MB). Griswold's literary friends also
■ acted through Griswold on Alice's behalf, praising her
j works to Griswold and the public, writing reviews of her
i
! books, and offering advice.
306
Griswold edited Fanny Osgood's collected poetry in
i
j 1850, but the volume was not a rousing success. This was
; the second collected edition of Osgood's poetry, the first
having been published in 1846. Though Griswold poured his
energies into this volume, which was beautifully bound and
illustrated, the second collection was never as popular as
the first. The second collection had a very poor sale,
| though it was reprinted in 1853 and 1876. Osgood's first
collection, however, had a wide following and was
reprinted in 1848, 1849, 1850, 1852, and 1861. The
1 publication of The Female Poets of America probably helped
j
; attract interest to Osgood, and the expensive cost of
I
j Griswold's elaborate volume may have sent the public back
to the early collection.
Though Griswold helped many women publish their work
he did not help all. He had included Susan Archer Talley,
a friend of Poe's, in The Female Poets of America: and,
apparently, he encouraged her to publish a volume of her
poems which he would edit. Talley sent him her manuscript
i
| and waited. When months passed and she received no reply
I
: she wrote to him to ask whether he intended to have the
l
| poems published (May 17, 1852, MB). Six months later,
f
having received no response from Griswold, Talley wrote
again, asking Griswold to either publish the poems or
307
return the manuscript to her (Nov. 4, 1852, MB). A year
and a half after she had sent her manuscript to Griswold,
34
Talley sent her brother to pick up the manuscript.
In 1850 Griswold accepted a position that helped him
to promote the careers of several women poets. He went to
work for Stringer and Townsend, New York publishers who
were beginning a new publication, The International
Magazine. The International was mostly a reprint
magazine, intended to compete with Littell1s Living Age,
in borrowing interesting articles from foreign
periodicals. Griswold also published original
contributions by American writers he admired, including
Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Alice Cary, and Mary Hewitt, all of
whom had been included in The Female Poets of America.
Griswold's editorial friends would sometimes send along
the work of writers they wished to promote in the
magazine. George Prentice, for example, recommended the
poetry of a Miss Griffith (Oct. 14, [1851], MB) for the
new publication. Griswold also published reviews of
current books, which gave him the opportunity of promoting
certain women writers. For example, when Anna Cora Mowatt
34. The Griswold Collection at the Boston Public Library
includes a noted dated May 30, 1853 which Talley's brother
delivered to Griswold.
308
wished to promote a new publication by her friend, Mrs.
Camilla Crosland, she wrote a review of the work and asked
Epes Sargent to send it to Griswold (Epes Sargent to RWG,
Sept. 15 [1850], MB).
Griswold remained with The International for
twenty-two months, between July 1, 1850 and April 1,
1'852. He continued to field articles for the magazine,
however, even after going on to other projects. Mary
Hewitt continued as a contributor, sending her poems and
articles to the new editor through Griswold who had always
befriended her work. She wrote to Griswold in the spring
of 1856 with several requests:
Here are some lines, written the other day,
and which nobody has seen but you and
myself— and as you think the bien tendre is my
forte, I send them for the International, not
without some misgivings about being thought a
mannerist by the readers of 'your valuable
magazine1 for playing so constantly on one
theme. So the next time my subject must be
fiercely something else besides that which
everybody sighs for and nobody realizes.
Messrs. Cornish & Lamport have in press
'Heroines of History' edited by Mrs. Hewitt's
self, which will be ready on the last of the
present month, and I was bespeak [sic] a 'first
rate notice' both for the book and for me.
Shall I have it?
Where are you? (March 24 [1856], MB)
309
| Hewitt and Griswold had been brought together by an
I
editorial project that was an indirect result of The
Female Poets of America. After The Female Poets was
published a number of books appeared dealing with women's
history and women’s writing. Griswold's anthology, along
with Read's and May's, had created an audience for such
works. When Fanny Osgood died in the spring of 1850, Mary
Hewitt undertook the task of collecting testimonials and
pieces of literature from Osgood's many friends and
admirers and publishing them with some of Osgood's own
writing. The proceeds from the volume, entitled The
Memorial: Written by the Friends of the Late Mrs. Osgood
was to be used to buy a monument in Osgood's memory
(Passages 263). Griswold, who adored Fanny Osgood, was
anxious to help in this venture and became the business
manager for the volume, keeping track of expenses and
working out arrangements with the publisher, Abraham Hart
of Philadelphia. Griswold also helped Hewitt to collect
manuscripts from the contributors and wrote an article for
the volume himself.
The resulting volume was a fitting tribute to one of
the best-loved literary women in New York. The Memorial
i
; was beautiful, bound in purple cloth with gold filigree
I
r
310
decoration. The volume was printed on high quality paper
and included an engraving of Panny and engravings of two
her two eldest children, Ellen and May. Several of the
i women included in The Female Poets of America had written
i
' pieces for the volume, including: Sarah Helen Whitman,
I
| Anne Lynch, Emma Embury, Estelle Lewis, Elizabeth Bogart,
I Lydia Sigourney, and Elizabeth Oakes Smith under the
I
pseudonym Ernest Helfenstein. Hawthorne's story, "The
1
Snow Image," was also included.
I
The Female Poets of America also paved the way for a
project that Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey1s,
( undertook in 1849. By her own account, she had been
| planning and working on a biographical dictionary of
famous women for two years before The Female Poets
appeared, but the publication of Griswold's anthology
undoubtedly spurred on her effort in 1849 (Hale to RWG,
April 7, 1849, PHi). In fact, Hale's letters indicate
that most of the work on the volume was done from April
1849 to November 1850. In undertaking this project. Hale
upstaged Griswold who had talked with Fanny Osgood about
publishing a similar work (Hale to RWG, April 7, 1849,
PHi). The biographical dictionary, which eventually came
to be called Women1s Record: Sketches of All Distinguished
Women from The Creation to A.D. 1854, was an extensive
311
document with over 2500 women included and 230
poorly-executed engravings (Hale to Messrs. Harper, Dec.
29, 1849, NNPM). The book ran to 900 pages in double
columns.
At first, Hale had some difficulty getting Women1s
Record published. She wrote to Harpers offering the
volume and received a letter back that was not
encouraging. Hale was surprised and puzzled that Harpers
was not interested in a volume that seemed to have such a
ready audience. She also suspected that she was being
steered away from the project for political reasons. She
wrote to the Rev. J. McClintock, assuring him of the
book's prospects and sending a list of names to be
included. She also told McClintock that she suspected the
Harpers of discouraging her from the work in favor of
Griswold. She told him:
I would not like to have the list [of names
to be included] shown to Mr. Griswold (Rufus
W.), as I have reason to believe he is not
friendly to my plan, or rather, that he would
like to prepare a similar work. I tell you this
in confidence; I do not wish to have it named to
the Harpers— they employ Mr. G.— like him
perhaps. But if you can, will you ascertain if
he has said anything to the Messrs. H's to
disparage my work, and induce them to hesitate
about publishing it? (May 16, 1849, NNPM)
312
McClintock may have attempted to persuade the Harpers
of the book's prospects. At any rate, Hale's letter seems
to have been effective, since Harper's decided to publish
the work, and a contract was drawn up by the end of the
year (Hale to Messrs. Harper, Dec. 29, 1849, NNPM).
Women's Record sold quite well and was reprinted into the
1870's. The book's reception was aided by friendly
reviews, some of them, surprisingly enough, written or
procured by Rufus Griswold (Harpers to S. J. Hale, n.d.,
NNPM).
Women's Record came into competition with a number of
other works on women's history that were published just
after The Female Poets of America appeared. Mary Hewitt
had a book of women's lives published entitled, The
Heroines of History (1852), which included the histories
of such disparate women as Boadicea, The Empress
Josephine, and Joan of Arc. It was republished under
various titles until 1870. Elizabeth Ellet had a series
of books on women's history published from the 1850's on,
including The Pioneer Women of the West which was
reprinted from the 1850's into the 1890's. The Queens of
American Society (1867), and The Eminent and Heroic Women
of America (1873). Lydia Sigourney thought of a project
similar to Hale's Women1s Record a bit too late. She
wrote to a publisher in the hopes of having a selection of
religious biographies published. While she was working on
the project Hale's book was published, and Sigourney's
publisher rejected her volume, fearing that it would not
be successful with a similar work already on the market
(Sigourney to ----, March 22, 1851, TxU).
Three anthologies of "female" poetry created the need
for another anthology, this time a prose anthology. John
S. Hart, a Philadelphia editor, saw the success of the
poetry anthologies and began work on The Female Prose
Writers of America in 1851. Hart was an acquaintance of
Griswold's. When Hart had been a co-editor of Sartain's
Union Magazine of Literature and Art, Griswold had sent a
poem by Mrs. Whitman for him to publish (July 14, 1849,
NIC). Hart had also solicited Griswold for articles on
George Washington's attorney general, William Bradford,
and on General Armstrong, which Griswold had happily
supplied (RWG to Hart, July 1, 1850, PHi). Griswold may
have felt unhappy that Hart was undertaking a project that
he himself was so eminently qualified for, but work on The
International kept him from undertaking any other major
projects.
314
j Through 1851 Hart solicited information from the
I writers, many of them the same women that Griswold had
! 35
included in The Female Poets of America. The Female
, Prose Writers of America appeared in the fall of 1851. It
I was a thick volume, 536 pages long, with eight engravings
[ of women prose writers and long biographical sketches.
I
I Each of the women included had only one or two prose
' selections included, since short stories and essays took
| up so much more room than poetry. Griswold must have been
I
j disappointed to see Hart's preface in which he stated his
f
i reason for undertaking the project: "The unwonted favor
extended to 'Read's Female Poets of America,1 led to the
I belief that a work on the Female Prose Writers,
i .
> constructed on a similar plan, would not be unacceptable
i
! to the public." It should not be surprising that Hart
praised Read's anthology over Griswold's in the preface.
The Prose Writers of America was published by E. H. Butler
^ of Philadelphia, the same company that published Read.
i
l
! Hart's The Female Prose Writers of America found a
I
measure of success for itself, but it never achieved the
popularity of Griswold's anthology. Hart's volume was
35. See letters from Sigourney to Hart, March 4, 1851,
PHi; P. Cary to Hart, Oct. 8, 1851, RPB-JH.
315
i
published in 1852, 1855, 1857, 1864, 1866, and 1870. It
was reprinted in 1930 by another publisher.
Griswold's anthologies had dominated in the 1840's,
but in the 1850's he found that he had competition. His
own success had been such that anthologies began appearing
with great frequency, sometimes edited by those more able
than he. Griswold felt the competition keenly and
intended to remain competitive by revising his own
anthologies. But Griswold lacked the patience to revise a
work thoroughly. He was better at hurrying a work to
publication than laboriously correcting and rewriting. As
soon as The Female Poets of America came off the press,
Griswold announced to his publisher his intention of
revising The Poets and Poetry of America, making it as
long as The Female Poets (RWG to Carey and Hart, Jan. 15,
1849, PHi). He also began collecting material for the
first revision of The Female Poets of America. Estelle
Lewis had been quite unhappy with her biographical sketch
and Poe had written another which Griswold intended to
substitute in the next edition (Poe to RWG, June 18, 1849,
MB). Griswold was also interested in collecting
engravings of the women poets so as to make his work more
competitive with Read's.
316
Griswold again brought up the possibility of revising
his anthologies with his publishers in 1853. In the
meantime Carey and Hart had broken up as a firm in the
fall of 1849. Abraham Hart owned the stereotype plates of
The Poets and Poetry of America and The Prose Writers of
America. Henry Baird, a longtime employee of the firm,
owned the plates of The Female Poets of America. Griswold
wrote to both men on February 17, 1853 to urge the
revision of all three of these anthologies. Griswold told
both Hart and Baird that the new anthologies were
necessary because Putnam was publishing a series of
volumes on American authors which would displace his if he
did not revise (RWG to A. Hart, Feb. 17, 1853, NHi; RWG to
H.C. Baird, Feb. 17, 1853, PHi). Griswold told Baird:
I have been considering the subject of the
Female Poets. Putnam's series of American
authors, and Butler's books [Read's Female Poets
and Hart's Female Prose Writers! make it, I
think, quite indispensable that our book should
be revised, and illustrated, so as to take the
precedency of all the rest in its way. (Feb.
17, 1853, PHi)
Griswold also outlined for Baird the kinds of changes
in The Female Poets of America that would be required. He
told his publisher:
The matter to set and reset would be 50
pages. There are half a dozen names to be
added, and it strikes me that it is
indispensible for its success, the decided new
317
life I wish it to possess, that it should
contain portraits. You have (or you, & Mr.
Hart, who will readily [illegible] with you in
this matter to your satisfaction) Mrs.
Sigourney, & Mrs. Osgood, and I have at your
service one of Mrs. Lewis, in the same style,
that cost $250. If Col. Brooks, of the army, is
anywhere in this part of the Union, I can induce
him to have his mother's engraved in the same
manner. Then you have mine for a frontispiece.
To these add Alice Cary & Edith May, certainly,
and if you can, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Fuller— I
think I can get you one other, gratuitously.
You remember those heads by [Kalpin?] in
Redfield's [illegible]. They cost but $50 each,
and they would do.
The Female Poets, I think, can be made a
great book for the new season, with these
improvements. I hope you will decide for this
execution immediately, for I wish to go about my
part of them. (Feb. 17, 1853, PHi)
Several factors combined to keep Griswold from
working on the new revisions. Griswold had divorced
Charlotte on December 18, 1852 and married Harriet
McCrillis, an eligible spinster of 30, eight days later.
The two of them settled in a large house at 196 West
Twenty-third Street in New York, hoping to put the
emotional turmoil of the divorce behind them. Griswold
was ready for work. But the past was not easily shelved
and it came to haunt both Griswold and his new bride in
the form of Mrs. Ellet. Still angry over Griswold's
biographical sketch of her in The Female Poets of America,
Ellet did her best to make Griswold's life miserable.
Before Griswold obtained the divorce from Charlotte, Ellet
and another of Griswold's enemies, Ann Stephens, had
written to Charlotte urging her not to let Griswold
divorce her {Bayless 220). Charlotte allowed these women
to stir up her old feelings of bitterness toward Griswold,
and she wrote a scathing letter to Griswold's fiancee,
enumerating the reasons why Harriet should not let herself
be trapped into an "illegal" marriage (Bayless 221).
Ellet kept up her torment of the Griswolds after
their marriage. Early in 1853 she wrote a long letter to
Harriet in which she abused the bridegroom as a liar and a
blackguard (n.d., MB). Ellet also kept the feud alive by
talking against Griswold and by hounding him with
anonymous letters. Griswold said of Ellet's treatment
between 1853 and 1856:
From time to time during the following
three years anonymous letters about me, made up
of almost every species of slander and
vituperation were continually appearing the the
public Journals. If I was observed to be a
visitor at the house of any gentleman of social
or professional eminence, an anonymous letter
against me was addressed to him. Gentlemen and
ladies called at my own house at the peril of
receiving communications of the same
description. . . . All communications, to
individuals, or to the public, were easily
traceable to the same circle, and the larger
part of them to a single individual. (Bayless
229)
319
Griswold was also kept from revising The Female Poets
by trouble with his family. Not long after Harriet
received the letter from Ellet she decided to get away
from this uncomfortable situation in New York by visiting
her brother in Bangor. Taking Griswold's eldest daughter,
Emily, with her, Harriet boarded the train north and was
subsequently involved in a serious train accident. The
conductor of the train had failed to notice that a
drawbridge in Norwalk, Connecticut was up, and the train
plunged into the water. According to an early report,
forty-nine people were killed (Bayless 224). Griswold was
distraught and immediately set off by the first train for
Norwalk. He found his bride only slightly injured, but
his daughter was unconscious. Emily's long hair had
caught on some object in the water and the girl had nearly
drowned. Emily did recover, however, and Griswold stayed
with wife and daughter for about a month before returning
to work in New York (Bayless 224-25).
Griswold's health also made it difficult to work on
the revisions of his anthologies. In July he headed for
Maine to visit his family, but stopped off in Boston to be
checked by Dr. Gould, an eminent physician. Gould
declared that Griswold's tuberculosis was again active.
320
and Griswold prepared himself for what he assumed would be
his imminent demise. He sent a note to Fields with the
news:
Soon after we parted to-day I went to keep
an appointment with Dr. Gould, who made a most
careful and patient examination of my case, in
conversation, and with the stethescope. He but
confirmed my worst suspicions. I shall probably
live but a few weeks, and may therefore never
see you again— though Dr. Gould says apparently
worse cases have been cured. I have been
looking in the glass— and for a man under
sentence of death I look pretty well
— self-possessed and calm. But it is hard. God
help me. (July 29, 1853, CSmH)
Griswold went on to Bangor and despite a bad turn
when he could not walk unassisted, he recovered under the
care of his faithful wife. Harriet gave birth to a son,
William McCrillis Griswold, on October 9, and shortly
thereafter Griswold returned to the anthologies that
waited for him in New York. He planned to open the house
on Twenty-third Street where his family would join him,
and to that end he hired workmen to put the house in
order. One evening he noticed that there was a gas leak,
and, accompanied by a twelve-year-old neighbor child, he
took a candle with him to find the leak. When he and the
child entered a third-floor room and tremendous explosion
occurred which shattered windows, started a fire, and
threw Griswold and the child into the next room. The
321
child had caught on fire but Griswold managed to beat out
the flames with his hands, saving the child's life, but
severely burning himself on his face and hands. Seven of
his fingernails came off, and he was unable to write for
weeks. The anthology revisions were put off again.
In the meantime Mrs. Ellet and Ann Stephens had been
working on Charlotte. Each of them wrote to Charlotte
urging her to take action against the man who had wronged
her (Bayless 226-27). Despite the fact that Charlotte
could not benefit in any way by contesting the validity of
her divorce from Griswold, she began legal proceedings to
have her divorce decree set aside. On September 23, 1853,
Charlotte's lawyer filed her affidavit in the Court of
Common Pleas in Philadelphia. In doing so, Charlotte's
lawyer discovered that the records of the divorce had been
misplaced. Charlotte would have to wait for her appeal
until the status of the divorce was established (Bayless
227). It is easy to imagine Griswold's anguish as his
marital status again became ambiguous.
Griswold could have taken up the work of revising his
anthologies after his hands recovered. He was, however,
by that time too distracted by his health and his personal
problems to return immediately to work on the
322
anthologies. He was also distracted toy another project
that he had been planning for some time. Griswold had
I
always had a strong interest in history. He had been a
member of the New-York Historical Society since 1845, and
maintained an office in the same building as the Society
i so as to have ready access to its books. In 1851 he was
I
I
i asked by D. Appleton and Company to write a book based on
i the life of George Washington. The idea intrigued him and
I
I he began collecting materials early in 1853, at about the
i
same time as he notified his publishers that he would like
to revise his anthologies. When Griswold began to work at
full power again in the summer of 1854, it was The
• Republican Court, as the book was named, that took his
attention. As his letters indicate, Griswold continued to
gather materials for the revising of the anthologies, but
: he did not give them his full attention (RWG to Fields,
May 20, 1854, CSmH).
Griswold was finally spurred into action by one of
I his competitors. Evart and George Duyckinck, had been
I
j working on a large, scholarly anthology of American
i writers entitled The Cyclopedia of American Literature
which would compete directly with all of Griswold's
anthologies. Evart Duyckinck had been an open enemy of
Griswold's since he had published a harsh review of The
323
i Prose Writers of America in The Literary World. Duyckinck
| had further alienated Griswold by publishing an attack
written by Mrs. Ellet on The Female Poets of America.
When Griswold learned in the spring of 1855 that the
Duyckincks had stereotyped perhaps two hundred and fifty
pages of their book, he made immediate plans to go to his
publishers in Philadelphia. He wrote to Fields:
"Tomorrow I go to Philadelphia to spend a month or two,
tinkering [with] my old books— the Poets, F. Poets, and
Prosers" (March 5, 1855, CSmH).
Griswold began work on the best and most popular of
his anthologies. The Poets and Poetry of America, and it
was the only revision he finished. He wrote to the poets
for updated biographies and new poems, rewrote some of the
biographical headnotes, added engravings, and wrote a new
preface. The Poets and Poetry of America had included
only male poets since the 1849 edition which was the first
edition published since the appearance of The Female Poets
of America. The sixteenth edition of The Poets and Poetry
of America appeared in October 1855.
Griswold began canvassing the women poets for the
revision of The Female Poets of America in late spring.
He was interested in updating some of the biographical
sketches, especially for those poets who had become better
known since the original Female Poets of America was
published. He wrote to Sara J. Lippincott, who under the
pseudonym "Grace Greenwood" had published extensively
since 1849. She sent information to him in the next day's
mail, including a biographical notice that George Ripley
had published in The Phrenological Journal. She also
mentioned some errors that had appeared in the first
edition of The Female Poets that she wished corrected.
She told Griswold:
The notice of me in your work, and the
poems which you inserted contained some
errors— typographical and other— which I took
the liberty of calling your attention to, but by
the next edition, I was sorry to see that my
emendations had not been adopted. I have not
the book by me now, and cannot point them out
with certainty. You might, should you so please
make the corrections, by this later biography
and by consulting a copy of my poems.
(Greenwood to RWG, May 24, 1855, MB)
Griswold also wrote to Sarah Helen Whitman and Julia
Ward Howe, mostly to ask for their portraits which he
I
wished to have engraved for the new Female Poets. In
corresponding with them, however, he made known his
: intention to include some of their new poetry in the
i
forthcoming edition. Whitman had published a volume of
| poetry in 1853, entitled Hours of Life, and Other Poems
I
i
i which Griswold had read and admired (RWG to Whitman, June
325
I
* 22, 1855, NN-B). In responding to Griswold's letter
I
| Whitman suggested to the anthologist:
If you propose to make any alteration in
the letter-press of your new edition of the
"Female Poets" will you allow me to suggest that
over the top of the page where the Sleeping
Beauty is published the words "Mrs. Whitman &
Miss Power" be placed instead of my name alone.
I make this suggestion to you because it seems
hardly right that a poem, of which at least one
half was written by my sister, should be
published under my name. It was for this reason
that I omitted it from my collection, as also
the Ballad of Cinderella of which two thirds
were written by Miss Power. . . . (June 29,
n.y., RPB-JH)
Griswold reassured her, "Your suggestions in regard
i to the poems will be complied with by filling the places
of those referred to with extracts from your [new} volume"
(RWG to Whitman, July 26, 1855, NN-B).
Julia Ward Howe was also to be represented with more
recent work. Griswold was interested in including some
pieces from Howe's Paper Flowers published in 1854. She
responded to Griswold's letter in early July, telling him:
I should be very glad to have some extracts
from Paper Flowers appear in the new edition of
your Female Poets— as I cannot, however, act in
this matter without the concurrence of my
publishers, I must beg that you would address a
communication on this subject to Mr. Fields, of
Ticknor & Co., who will undoubtedly give it his
earliest attention" (July 1, n.y., MB).
326
As Griswold worked on the new edition of The Female
Poets of America he sometimes received letters from poets
who wished to be included in the work. Sarah Anna Downer
wrote to him in December in hopes that she could be
included before the book went to press. She told
Griswold:
The Oct. Number of the Knickerbocker
Magazine makes mention that the sixteenth
edition of the Female Poets of America is soon
to be issued. At the warmest solicitation of
many friends, I enclose the copies of several
poems, that were written prior to the
publication of your first edition, premising
with the following short introduction of
myself. (Dec. 18, 1855, MB)
Downer included a full biographical sketch of herself and
expressed regret that she had not contacted him when he
was working on the first edition. At that time she was,
as she put it,
laboring under great debility from recent
hemorrhage, and besides, I possessed no copies,
of what I considered my best pieces. I doubted
also, if I had written ought that could entitle
me to a niche in the temple of fame, and so the
time passed away. (Dec. 18, 1855, MB)
Doubtless there were many struggling poets who felt
similar regret at not having been included in Griswold's
Female Poets of America.
327
The most important change that Griswold wished to
make in his new edition was the inclusion of high quality
engravings. He did not intend that T. B. Read's Female
Poets or the Duyckincks' Cyclopedia which would include
engravings, should outshine his own anthology in that
department. He outlined for Mrs. Whitman his plans:
I am now preparing a new edition of "The
Female Poets of America," and my publishers
propose to embellish it with portraits of Maria
Brooks, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Margaret Fuller,
Mrs. Osgood, Alice Cary, yourself, and one or
two others. Will you allow me to have copied by
the engraver, any painting, photograph,
daguerreotype, or other picture of you? I hope
you will consent, and if you do, beg you to have
the portrait forwarded by express to Messrs.
Parry & McMillan, publishers, corner of Chestnut
and Fourth Street, Philadelphia. (June 22,
1855, NN-B)
Giovanni Thompson had completed a life-sized oil painting
of Mrs. Whitman which she was not sure would make a
suitable engraving (Whitman to RWG, June 29, n.y.,
RPB-JH). Griswold urged Mrs. Whitman to send it on, "so
that sufficient time might be spent on the plate" (July
26, 1855, NN-B).
Griswold's new edition of The Female Poets of America
was to be published by Parry and McMillan. Abraham Hart
had gone out of business and sold the plates in his
possession. Parry and McMillan had also obtained the
plates for The Poets and Poetry of America, so Griswold's
I
1 books were being brought out by one publisher again.
Presumably Parry and McMillan had also obtained the
engravings that Griswold had meant to include in earlier
editions of The Female Poets of America. Fanny Osgood had
had her portrait engraved for the first edition of The
Female Poets of America which might be used; Maria Brooks
had had an engraving included in the first edition of The
Poets and Poetry of America. Griswold's publishers also
had an engraving of Lydia Sigourney in their possession
(RWG to H. C. Baird, Feb. 17, 1853, PHi). Estelle Lewis
had been fiddling with various portraits and engravings of
them ever since Griswold had requested a portrait in
1848. In 1853 Griswold had in his possession an engraving
of Lewis that had cost $250, but Lewis was dissatisfied
with it and she wrote to Griswold in April of 1855 that he
would soon receive an engraving of her by Elliot for the
new edition (E. Lewis to RWG, April 14, 1855, PHi).
Griswold also wrote to Julia Ward Howe asking for a
portrait for the volume. Howe responded by saying:
I regret to say that there is no portrait
of me sufficiently characteristic for the
purpose suggested by you, nor can I supply this
, deficiency by a daguerreotype, as mine is a face
j which cannot be well rendered by this process.
I I have tried more than once, but have never
329
succeeded in getting a good daguerreotype of
! myself. (Howe to RWG, July 1, n.y., MB)
Griswold continued to coax Howe into having her picture
taken, but she was adamant. "Do you see," she wrote in
July, "that it is quite impossible that I should have the
honour of appearing with the distinguished women you
mention, in your next edition" (Howe to RWG, July 17,
n.y., MB).
There was much that needed to be done in the new
|
> edition to correct earlier errors and update information.
i
Estelle Lewis' name still appeared as Sarah Anna Lewis,
and Griswold had not yet substituted the new biographical
sketch of her written by Poe. Fanny Osgood's biographical
sketch needed to mention her death and the Memorial, and
dozens of women had published recent works that should be
included in their biographies. Several of the women had
married since the 1848 edition: Margaret Fuller had
become the Marchioness D'Ossoli, Anne Lynch became Anne
Botta, Anna Cora Mowatt became Anna Ritchie, Alice G. Neal
became Alice G. Haven. Griswold had also received letters
indicating possible errors of fact he had made. Charles
Marshall, a New York sea captain who owned a shipping
line, wrote to Griswold shortly after the first edition of
The Female Poets of America was published to ask:
In your notice of Mrs. C. A. Warfield one
of 'the sisters' [of the West— the name under
which they published], you mention very
favourably a novel by that lady! What novel do
you refer to? She had never published one, nor
I believe anything in Prose, with the exception
of a tale or two in The Opal.
I am much acquainted with Mrs. W., am in
correspondence with her, and have an object in
asking the question. Please advise me. (Feb.
13, 1849, MB)
But none of these changes were made in The Female
j Poets of America. Neither The Female Poets of America nor
!
| The Prose Writers of America were ever revised as Griswold
I
intended to revise them. Griswold had waited too long to
make changes in his books, and neither his health nor his
personal life allowed him to finish the revisions that he
' was so anxious to complete. In the fall of 1855 he
I
suffered another attack of tuberculosis while visiting his
wife in Bangor. He wrote to a friend, Orville James
Victor, the husband of Metta Fuller, of the state of The
Female Poets: "I have been quite too ill since I saw you
in New York to proceed with my literary labors, and so
: fear I shall not bring out the new edition of 'The Female
Poets' before Spring. Of this however, I will write to
I
i you soon" (Aug. 7, 1855, TxU). Griswold's publishers were
understandably anxious to get on with the new edition and
J wrote to Griswold in December asking, "Have you been able
I to do anything with the Female Poets? Have you placed in
331
the Engraver's hand any more portraits?" (Parry &
McMillan to RWG, Dec. 27, 1855, MB).
In fact, the engravings were the only change in the
new edition of The Female Poets of America. Six of the
poets had their pictures included in the volume: Maria
Brooks, Sarah Helen Whitman, Frances Osgood, Amelia Welby,
Edith May, and Alice Cary. An engraving of Griswold
adorned the frontispiece. Oddly enough, the one poet who
had worked hardest to have an engraving of herself in The
Female Poets was excluded. Estelle Lewis' picture never
appeared in the revised volume.
In February 1856 Charlotte's suit to nullify her
divorce from Griswold came to trial. Though Griswold was
not present in court, the trial clearly wore on both his
emotional and physical health. Ann Stephens and Elizabeth
Ellet were both present in the courtroom and their
persecution of Griswold was stepped up. Most of the
testimony concerned the validity of the divorce from
Charlotte. Though several clerks testified that they had
seen the decree properly made out and signed, Judge
Thompson dismissed the case on the grounds that the
original divorce was not recorded and was therefore
invalid. The trial was thoroughly covered in the
332
newspapers, adding to Griswold's humiliation. Though
Harriet still remained loyal to Griswold, she could no
longer tolerate the hounding of Griswold's enemies and she
returned to Bangor to live with her brother (Bayless
251). With Harriet gone Griswold decided to move into
smaller quarters and eventually took a room on Fourth
Avenue which he filled with his books and some of his
rosewood furniture. He took on one final project, writing
the life of Washington in monthly parts for Virtue, Emmis
and Company of New York.
It was a project he would never finish. The
tuberculosis took a turn for the worse early in 1857.
Harriet returned to New York in August when it was clear
that Griswold was dying, and stayed with him until he died
on August 27. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in New
York City on August 30 at a funeral attended by friends
from the New-York Historical Society and some of his
editorial colleagues. Of the women included in The Female
Poets of America, only the Cary sisters, and, oddly
enough, Ann Stephens, were present at the funeral.
Though Griswold had not been able to revise The
Female Poets of America, the book seemed to take on a life
of its own after his death. It was reprinted in 1859,
1860, and 1863. The book was revised in 1873 by Richard
Henry Stoddard, and was reprinted twice in 1874, in 1877,
and in 1892. It was ironic that Stoddard, the critic who
had infuriated Griswold in the 1850's by criticizing Alice
Cary's poetry, was called in to revise both The Poets and
Poetry of America and The Female Poets of America. It was
a difficult thing for Stoddard to meddle with anthologies
written thirty years earlier by a man whose philosophy of
poetry was so different from his own. As a result
Stoddard decided only to add to Griswold's work, altering
the original text in only the most superficial ways,
correcting the mistakes that Griswold himself would
clearly have corrected. Stoddard quoted the advice of a
friend in his preface to The Poets and Poetry of America:
"If I were in your place," was the advice
one gave, "I should not mix my work and
Griswold's, but leave the latter precisely as he
left it. Every reader now will want Griswold's
book (at least I do), with his biographies,
critical remarks, and selections. The latter
are as good as is necessary; giving in almost
all cases, the author's best and most
characteristic poems; while his criticisms would
lose their historical value if meddled with. To
be sure he got into a good deal of hot water
(there, by the way, is a warning to you, in
dealing with the new names,) but all that has
passed away. No one can complain if you let his
articles stand, while there might be a great
deal of complaint if you meddle with them."
(Passages 92)
334
Stoddard used a light hand with revisions in The
Female Poets of America as well. He changed the names of
those who had married since Griswold's first edition, but
let Griswold's preface and the biographical headnotes
stand. To Griswold's list of poets he added twenty-one
names and eighty-six pages of text. Some of the poets
Stoddard added are familiar to readers today, like Rose
Terry Cooke and Emma Lazarus. Stoddard wrote no
biographical sketches for his poets, thus saving himself
from the wrath of any of the women he included. He
assured his readers that he had "not meddled with Dr.
Griswold's selections, which are not in all cases,
perhaps, such as I should have chosen, and I have, of
course, let his criticisms stand for what they are worth:
they are generally generous, never, I believe, severe"
(FP, Preface, 8, 1873 edition).
Stoddard added a preface of his own to the volume
which made clear that he perceived Griswold's Female Poets
of America as a historical document rather than as a
description of present reality. Stoddard told this new
generation of readers:
Nearly twenty-five years have passed since
the first publication of "The Female Poets of
America" of which a new and enlarged edition is
here presented to the reader. Many who figured
in its pages then have passed away, and others
335
who remain have passed out of the remembrance of
their contemporaries. It might almost be said
that a new school of poetry has arisen, and a
new race of female poets come into existence
since this collection was first made. There is
little or no similarity between the writers whom
I have added to it, and those whom Dr. Griswold
delighted to honor, and from whose writings he
selected so lavishly. If he were alive now I
have no doubt but that he would prefer the
latter to the former, but he would hardly be
able to bring his readers to his way of
thinking. We have outgrown such singers of
spontaneous verse as Mrs. Hemans and Miss
Landon, and we insist that our songstresses
shall outgrow them, too. If they must reflect
other minds, those minds must be of a larger
order than their own, or we will none of
them— at second-hand. There is, if I am not
mistaken, more force and more originality— in
other words, more genius— in the living female
poets of America than in all their predecessors,
from Mistress Anne Bradstreet down. At any rate
there is a wider range of thought in their
verse, and infinitely more art (FP, Preface, 8,
1873 edition).
Stoddard's preface did not take account of the
enduring influence that Griswold had had on the women's
literary community. Griswold's anthology had stimulated
women's literature in both poetry and prose. Books
written by women appeared in great numbers in the 1850's.
The volumes of poetry by women that were published in the
wake of The Female Poets of America not only established
the reputations of their authors, but also stimulated the
new poets of which Stoddard was so proud. The anthologies
that followed Griswold often reflected his research, his
opinions, and even his format. When an anthology was
336
I
published in 1871 entitled The Living Female Poets of the j
South the reader could be certain that its editor was !
following in the footsteps of Griswold.
Some poets owed their fame to Griswold. Alice Cary |
; |
; might never have become an established poet without j
i
Griswold's energetic and unflagging assistance. Amelia
Welby might have remained an obscure Western poet if
Griswold had not urged her to publish a collected volume.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith went on to a distinguished career as
a lecturer on women's rights from the reputation that |
I
Griswold had made for her as a poet. Most of the women j
included in The Female Poets of America found it easier to I
I
be published after the anthology was circulated. Griswold :
i
j had also depressed certain reputations. Jane Locke and
Caroline Orne found it more difficult to publish because
of Griswold. In general, Griswold's Female Poets of j
I
America gave shape to the relationships between women i
i
poets on the Eastern seaboard, particularly in New York j
i and Boston. In the 1850's women poets formed friendships
i
|
within a literary community, and defined themselves by its
parameters. i
i
The women whose literature had been brought into ]
i
prominence by The Female Poets of America were grateful to :
I
337 |
I
their mentor. Ten years after Griswold's death Elizabeth
Oakes Smith wrote:
For twenty years Mr. Griswold toiled
indefatigably in his range of pursuit, and may
be said to have created our embodied literature,
or rather revealed to us the wealth we
possessed. . . . Before Griswold's time we
had no well-defined literature— we did not know
our own resources; and now that he is gone, and
the radicals usurp the whole field, the
barrenness of the acres is melancholy to
behold. . . . We have reason to be grateful
to him, as Americans, for what he did for
literature. He was untiring in his researches,
and sought for the beauties of an author with as
much avidity as critics of less fineness of
intuition look for faults. That his judgment
was not always to be trusted, is not much to say
of one who did so much that was trustworthy.
(May 1867; Beadle's Monthly III, 439)
Epilogue
Griswold had helped to foster a stereotype of women
poets that lasted long after the public had forgotten his
anthologies. Griswold believed the poetry of women to be
mostly "sauzle," as he told Fields. He felt that it was
trivial, imitative, overly emotional, and carelessly
written. Even as he praised the poets in his anthology,
he noted their limitations. He became skilled in
doubletalk when speaking of women's poetry, mixing praise
with blame, summing up a poet's work as "characterized by
womanly feeling and a tasteful simplicity of diction" and
describing its "range" as "limited" (FP 63). He appeared
to believe that only a man could be a professional poet.
A woman might publish poetry if she were financially hard
up or as a pleasant outlet from her main occupations of
wife and mother, but a woman was not a professional poet.
This philosophy of Griswold's meant that the same
standards would not apply to male poetry as to female
poetry. It was possible to accept poetry from women that
was unrevised or badly edited; men must polish their work
339
to make it acceptable. Thus Griswold's protegees had
their work published with little or no revision. Critics
freauently followed the same chivalric code that indicated
I
I
that a woman's poetry was not serious enough to call into j
question. Women poets in the nineteenth century could not j
I i
become educated as poets because they received little or !
1 I
no negative criticism. j
I
Griswold believed that women's poetry was not serious I
in its subject matter. Certainly that belief had been *
i
held before Griswold produced his anthology, but as the j
chief authority on women's poetry once The Female Poets of
America was published, Griswold did nothing to alter that
opinion in the public mind. In fact, Griswold did much to j
i
promote the idea that women would naturally write on I
limited topics. Women wrote of home and family, of nature j
i
and the inner workings of the poet's imagination. Women's
poetry was often melancholy, reflecting a woman's limited
j
j I
' life. Richard Henry Stoddard had struck at the heart of
I
i ;
Griswold's beliefs about women's poetry when he criticized :
i
I
Alice Cary's poems as imitative and gloomy. Griswold
i
liked Alice Cary's poems because both the author and her J
I *
| poems fit in to his conception of what a woman poet was.
| A woman poet was intense, introspective, melancholy. Her
J poems would reflect that limited range of a woman's life.
They were distinctly "female poetry" in the narrow sense
in which Victorian society could proscribe it. Griswold 1
! liked her poems because they were "female" poems.
4
' l
| It is ironic that of all Griswold's acquaintance
! Stoddard was chosen to revise The Female Poets of !
' I
i !
America. Stoddard did not believe that there was such an j
entity as "female" poems. Women wrote poems as men wrote !
I
|
poems, and if their productions did not achieve a
universal standard for poetry, then the critic had a duty i
to point out that deficiency to the public. Stoddard did
4
not question the propriety of criticizing Alice Cary's
most recent volume of poetry on the pages of the Albion,
i
| just as he would not have hesitated in criticizing Holmes
J or Lowell. For Stoddard, poetry had to stand on its own
merits, without any consideration of its source.
The argument between Griswold and Stoddard continues
I today in other contexts. To a great extent Griswold's
| i
; belief that women's poetry is essentially different from
! men's has become firmly rooted, even among those poets and
I i
literary critics who would not be happy to acknowledge
their debt to Griswold. The stereotype of the "woman"
I i
| poet is still extant, and is described in terms not unlike
those of Griswold. For example, in 1961 Theodore Roethke
i began an essay introducing the poetry of Louise Bogan in
I 4
4
I
341 i
this fashion:
Two of the charges most frequently levelled
against poetry by women are lack of range— in
subject matter, in emotional tone— and lack of a
sense of humor. And one could, in individual
instances among writers of real talent, add
other aesthetic and moral shortcomings: the
spinning-out; the embroidering of trivial
themes; a concern with the mere surfaces of
life— that special province of the feminine
talent in prose— hiding from the real agonies of
the spirit; refusing to face up to what
existence is; lyric or religious posturing;
running between the boudoir and the altar,
stamping a tiny foot against God; or lapsing
into a sententiousness that implies the author
has re-invented integrity; carrying on
excessively about Fate, about time; lamenting
the lot of the woman; caterwauling; writing the
same poem about fifty times, and so on.
But Louise Bogan is something else.
(Roethke 133-34)
Roethke's language is remarkably similar to
Griswold's despite the lapse of almost 140 years, and the
ideas are almost identical. Though Roethke lists these
characteristics as "charges" levelled by others, it is
I
i
clear that to a great extent he accepts their validity.
I
He values Louise Bogan's poetry because she is not like !
the stereotype. The implication remains that other women
The most significant effect of Griswold's Female ;
I
I
Poets of America on women's poetry came out of this notion !
that female poetry was essentially different from male
i
!
342
poetry. When Griswold compiled The Female Poets of
America he took the women poets out of his 1842 anthology j
The Poets and Poetry of America. Women never appeared in I
t
I
that anthology again. None of the general anthologies of ;
i
i
American poetry before Griswold, not Cheever, Bryant,
I
Keese, or Kettell, had separated men's poetry from
women's. Griswold began what became a fashion. His
i anthology made it possible to see women's poetry as a
separate thing, a specialized kind of poetry, almost a j
i
genre unto itself. Whatever poetry written by women was,
it was not essentially the same thing as that written by j
I
men. It was, in other words, not "real" poetry.
The separation between male and female poetry is very
evident today. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that
!
today some of the most avid sponsors of women's poetry as
different, special, and apart from the mainstream are
feminists. Feminist presses publish women's poetry
i
' I
because it is written by women. They publish women's
anthologies of all sorts as though women's writing were
essentially different from men's. Women's writing has
| become a specialty group, not dissimilar from :
nineteenth-century fiction, or Renaissance plays. Thus
{
there can be published in 1985 a Norton Anthology of 1
►
Literature by Women as though somehow each piece included
343 i
in such a text will have its meaning enhanced in the ■
context of the other pieces included in the collection.
i
To see literature that is written by women as having
I
i meaning because it is written by women is to accept
I
Griswold's dictum that "literature has sex and is
i
offensive when it has not." Literature speaks to j
universal needs and to a universal reality. Good j
j literature has one standard for men and women. No subject j
J matter, no writing style is inappropriate for either sex.
Griswold's last anthology, The Female Poets of I
!
America, has Iona faded from the oublic memory. But the !
I
ideas he promulgated in it, the prejudices which informed j
it, continue to influence the literary community through
i sources which are indebted to him.
Bibliography
Barnes, Homer F. Charles Fenno Hoffman. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1930.
Bayless, Joy. Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe 1s Literary
Executor. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press,
1943 .
Bryant, William Cullen. Selections from the American
Poets. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840.
Cheever, George B. The American Common-place Book of
Poetry. Boston: Carter, Hendee and Babcock, 1831.
Child, Lydia Maria. The Mother1s Book. Boston: Carter,
Hendee and Babcock, 1831.
Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War: American Women
in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hill and Wang,
1984.
Cott, Nancy F. The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman1s Sphere"
in New England, 1780-1835. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1977.
Cott, Nancy F., ed. Root of Bitterness: Documents of
the Social History of American Women. New York:
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1972.
Cross, Barbara, ed. The Educated Woman in America:
Selected Writings of Catharine Beecher, Margaret
Fuller, and M. Carey Thomas. New York: Teachers'
College Press, 1965.
Douglas, Ann. The Feminization of American Culture.
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Dyce, Rev. Alexander. Specimens of British Poetesses;
Selected and Chronologically Arranged. London:
T. Rodd, 1827.
345
j Epstein, Barbara Leslie. The Politics of Domesticity:
Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-
j Century America. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
I University Press, 1981.
Foster, George G. New-York in Slices. New York: W. F.
Burgess, 1848.
Gallagher, William D. Selections from the Poetical
I Literature of the West. Cincinnati: U. P. James,
1841.
Graves, A. J. Woman in America: Being an Examination
into the Moral and Intellectual Condition of American
j Female Society. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1843.
i "Greenwood, Grace." Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of
Sketches and Letters. Boston: Thurston, Torry & Co.,
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Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. Catalogue of the Entire Private
Library of the Late Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. Privately
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Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, ed. The Female Poets of America.
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Originally published 1849.
Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, ed. The Female Poets of America.
With Additions by R. H. Stoddard. New York: James
Miller, 1873.
Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, ed. Gems from American Female
Poets. Philadelphia: H. Hooker, 1842.
Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. Passages from the Correspondence
and Other Papers of Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Ed. W. M.
Griswold. Cambridge, Mass.: W. M. Griswold, 1898.
Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, ed. The Poets and Poetry of
America. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1842.
Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, ed. The Prose Writers of America.
Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1847.
I Haight, Gordon Sherman. Mrs. Sigourney, the Sweet Singer
I of Hartford. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. The Ladles1 Wreath: A Selection j
from the Female Poetic Writers of England and America.
Boston: March, Capen & Lyon; New York: D. Appleton J
; & Co., 1837. j
|
' Hale, Sarah Josepha. Woman1s Record; Sketches of All
Distinguished Women, from the Creation to A.D. 1854.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1860. j
Harrison, James A., ed. The Complete Works of Edgar |
Allan Poe. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1902.
i Hart, John S. The Female Prose Writers of America,
j Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co., 1855. Originally
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I
Hewitt, Mary E., ed. The Memorial; Written by Friends !
of the Late Mrs. Osgood. New York: Putnam, 1851. j
I
Hubbell, Jay B. Who Are the Major American Writers? |
Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1972. j
Hurd-Mead, Kate Campbell. A History of Women in
Medicine from the Earliest Times to the Beginning '
of the Nineteenth Century. Haddam, Conn.: Haddam
Press, 1938.
I
Keese, John. The Poets of America: Illustrated by One !
of her Painters. New York: Samuel Colman, 1842. '
] ;
j Kettell, Samuel. Specimens of American Poetry with
! Critical and Biographical Notices. Boston: S. G.
| Goodrich & Co., 1829.
Kinney, Elizabeth Clementine. The Personal Reminiscences
of Elizabeth C. Kinney. Unpublished manuscript held
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1 Lebergott, Stanley. Manpower in Economic Growth: The
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i
| Lerner, Gerda. "The Lady and the Mill Girl." In Our
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347
May, Caroline. The American Female Poets. New York:
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Neu, J. L. "Rufus Wilmot Griswold." Studies in English:
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165. i
! Pattee, Fred Lewis. The Feminine Fifties. New York:
| D. Appleton Century Company, Inc., 1940.
; I
! Pollin, Burton R. "The Provenance and Correct Text of
Poe's Review of Griswold's Female Poets of America."
Poe Newsletter, 2 (1969), 35-36. |
I
Read, Thomas Buchanan. The Female Poets of America. ■
Fourth edition. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co.,
1851. Originally published, 1848.
Roethke, Theodore. On the Poet and His Craft: Selected !
Prose of Theodore Roethke. E. Ralph J. Mills, Jr.
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1965.
Ryan, Mary. Womanhood in America from Colonial Times to j
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Scudder, Horace Elisha. James Russell Lowell. 2 vols. ;
j Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1901. ;
Smith, Elizabeth Oakes. Selections from the Autobiography i
of Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Ed. Mary Alice Wyman.
Lewiston, Maine: Lewiston Journal Company, 1924.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. "Beauty, the Beast and the
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Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. "The Female World of Love and
i Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth- ■
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i j
Ticknor, Caroline. Poe1s Helen. New York: Scribner's 1
Sons, 1916. !
Warren, Mercy Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous. i
Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, 1790.
348 j
Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-
1860." American Quarterly 18 (1966), 151-174.
Wheatley, Phillis. Memoir and Poems of a Native African
and a Slave. Second edition. Boston, 1835.
Woodberry, George E. The Life of Edgar Allan Poe:
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Original Documents
CSmH— Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California
Elizabeth Ellet to Carey & Hart, Dec. 14, 1848
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, April 7 [1840]
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, July 10 [1842]
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, Nov. 10, 1842
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, Nov. 27, 1842
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, Nov.
11, 1843
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, March 7, 1847
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, [July 20]
[1848]
Rufus W. Griswold to Carey & Hart, Dec. 11, 1848
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, [1848]
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, [1848]
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, Jan. 14, 1849
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, [c. Feb.], 1849
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, [1849]
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, April 6 [1850]
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, Aug. 12, 1850
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, July 29, 1853
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, Jan. 28, 1854
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, May 20, 1854
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, Feb. 10, 1855
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, March 5, 1855
Rufus W. Griswold to James T. Fields, n.d.
Julia Ward Howe to James T,. Fields, Oct. 9 [1853]
Julia Ward Howe to Rufus W,, Griswold, Jan. 21 [1854]
Edgard Allan Poe to John Reuben Thompson, Jan. 13,
I
349
j CtHi— Connecticut Historical Society
Thomas B. Read to Lydia Sigourney, Jan. 9, 1848
, Thomas B. Read to Lydia Sigourney, May 12, 1848
CtY— Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University
Rufus W. Griswold to Edwin Percy Whipple, Jan. 17,
1842
Lydia Sigourney to Caroline Gilman, April 11, 1849
MB— Boston Public Library
Charles Frederick Briggs to Rufus W. Griswold, n.d. |
Mary M. Burbank to Rufus W. Griswold, May 13, n.y. j
Carey and Hart to Rufus W. Griswold, April 18, 1842 j
Alice Cary to Rufus W. Griswold, July 3, 1848 j
Alice Cary to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 26, 1849 1
Alice Cary to Rufus W. Griswold, March 25, 1850 j
J. B. Clarke to Rufus W. Griswold, May 18, 1846 j
James Freeman Clarke to Rufus W. Griswold, n.d.
Mary Ann Hanmer Dodd to Rufus W. Griswold, Dec. 11,
1854
Sarah Anna Downer to Rufus W. Griswold, Dec. 18,
1855 ]
Elizabeth Ellet to Rufus W. Griswold, [1848] |
Elizabeth Ellet to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 4, n.y. j
Elizabeth Ellet to Rufus W. Griswold, Nov. 24, n.y.
Elizabeth Ellet to Harriet McCrillis Griswold, n.d. i
James T. Fields to Rufus W. Griswold, Aug. 15, 1848
James T. Fields to Rufus W. Griswold, Aug. 11, 1854
Nathaniel L. Frothingham to Rufus W. Griswold,
June 27, 1848
Frances Fuller to Rufus W. Griswold, July 14, 1850
William D. Gallagher to Rufus W. Griswold, May 4, .
1852
Samuel Gilman to Rufus W. Griswold, Nov. 28, 1851 i
Sarah Gilman to Rufus W. Griswold, Dec. 9, 1851
F. Gleason to Rufus W. Griswold, Feb. 7, 1849 i
Horace Greeley to Rufus W. Griswold, Nov. 13, 1843 J
"Grace Greenwood" to Rufus W. Griswold, May 24, 1855 j
Rev. John Gray to Rufus W. Griswold, July 5, 1848
Rufus W. Griswold to Elizabeth Ellet, Nov. 25, [1848]
Rufus W. Griswold to Edwin Percy Whipple, [Nov. 25]
[1848]
350
I
Rufus W. Griswold to Elizabeth Oakes Smith, April 17,
n.y.
Rufus W. Griswold to Elizabeth Ellet, Dec. 30, n.y.
Rufus W. Griswold to Edwin Percy Whipple, n.d.
Abraham Hart to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 31, 1850
Mary E. Hewitt to Rufus W. Griswold, March 24 [1856]
Julia Ward Howe to Rufus W. Griswold, July 1, n.y.
Julia Ward HoWe to Rufus W. Griswold, July 17, n.y.
John Keese to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 20, 1842
John Keese to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 27, 1842
John Keese to Rufus W. Griswold, Feb. 15, 1842
Estelle Lewis to Rufus W. Griswold, April 4, n.y.
Sylvanus Lewis to Rufus W. Griswold, Nov. 2, 1846
Jane Locke to Mary E. Hewitt, Jan. 6, 1851
Jane Locke to Mary E. Hewitt, Jan. 13 [1851]
Ann Lynch to Rufus W. Griswold, July 13, n.y.
Charles Marshall to Rufus W. Griswold, Feb. 13, 1849
Mary B. Williams for Rebecca S. Nichols to Rufus W.
Griswold, March 27, n.y.
Frances Osgood to Rufus W. Griswold, March 3, 1849
Parry & McMillan to Rufus W. Griswold, Dec. 27, 1855
George Prentice to Rufus W. Griswold, Oct. 14 [1851]
Edgar Allan Poe to Rufus W. Griswold, June 18, 1849
Thomas B. Read to Rufus W. Griswold, Dec. 21, 1846
Epes Sargeant to Rufus W. Griswold, Sept. 15 [1850]
Caroline Sawyer to Rufus W. Griswold, n.d.
Charles Sedgwick to the Editor of Graham's, May 6,
1843
Lydia Sigourney to Rufus W. Griswold, Dec. 29, 1848
Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Rufus W. Griswold, n.d.
Susan Talley to Rufus W. Griswold, May 17, 1852
Susan Talley to Rufus W. Griswold, Nov. 4, 1852
Susan Talley to Rufus W. Griswold, May 30, 1852
F. W. Thomas to Rufus W. Griswold, June 8, 1841
F. W. Thomas to Rufus W. Griswold, Dec. 15, 1841
F. W. Thomas to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 17, 1842
John Reuben Thompson to Rufus W. Griswold, Oct. 12,
1848
John Reuben Thompson to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 16,
1849
Horace Binney Wallace to Rufus W. Griswold, Aug. 11
[1841]
William Wallace Warden to Rufus W. Griswold,
Dec. 27, 1852
Amelia Welby to Rufus W. Griswold, June 30, 1843
Sarah Helen Whitman to Rufus W. Griswold, [1848]
Sarah Helen Whitman to Rufus W. Griswold, [1848]
Sarah Helen Whitman to Rufus W. Griswold, n.d.
351
John Greenleaf Whittier to Rufus W, Griswold,
Oct. 10, 1851
MCR— Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College
Lydia M. Child to Rufus W. Griswold, May 1, 1843
(microfiche)
MH— Houghton Library, Harvard University
Phoebe Cary to Rufus W. Griswold, Feb. 19, 1849
James T. Fields to Rufus W. Griswold, Aug. 14, 1850
George Graham to Frances Osgood, May 24, 1845
Frances Osgood to Rufus W. Griswold, March 19, 1849
NHi— New-York Historical Society
Lydia Maria Child to "Miss May," Feb. 3, n.d.
Lydia Maria Child to Ann Lynch, n.d.
Elizabeth Ellet to Carey & Hart, Nov. 27, n.y.
Rufus W. Griswold to Abraham Hart, Jan. 9, 1849
Rufus W. Griswold to Abraham Hart, Feb. 17, 1853
NIC— John M. Olin Library, Cornell University
Rufus W. Griswold to John S. Hart, July 14, 1849
Thomas B. Read to Bayard Taylor, Oct. 11, 1848
NN-B— Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English
and American Literature, New York Public Library
Rufus W. Griswold to George Pabodie, June 8, 1852
Rufus W. Griswold to Abraham Hart, n.d.
Rufus W. Griswold to Sarah Helen Whitman, June 22,
1855
Rufus W. Griswold to Sarah Helen Whitman, July 26,
1855
NNBa— Wollman Library, Barnard College
Frances Osgood to "Grace Greenwood," n.d.
352
NNC— Butler Library, Columbia University
Elizabeth Kinney to Edmund Clarence Stedman, Oct. 8,
1848
Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Elizabeth Kinney, Nov. 12,
1851
NNPM— Pierpont Morgan Library
Charles Bowen to Elizabeth Ellet, Nov. 28, 1848
Rufus W. Griswold to Carey & Hart, July 19, 1848
Sarah Josepha Hale to Rev. McClintock, May 16, 1849
Sarah Josepha Hale to Messrs. Harper, Dec. 29, 1849
Messrs. Harper to Sarah Josepha Hale, n.d.
PHi— Pennsylvania Historical Society
Park Benjamin to Rufus W. Griswold, June 27, 1842
Elizabeth Bogart to Rufus W. Griswold, Aug. 6, n.y.
George Boker to Rufus W. Griswold, Oct. 31, 1848
George Cheever to Rufus W. Griswold, Oct. 25, 1843
Sara J. Clarke to Rufus W. Griswold, Dec. 22, 1842
Elizabeth Ellet to Editor of Graham * s, Aug. 20, 1842
Emma Embury to George Graham, Oct. 25, 1841
William D. Gallagher to Rufus W. Griswold, Oct. 6,
1848
Rufus W. Griswold to Maria A. Brooks, July 18, 1842
Rufus W. Griswold to Carey & Hart, Jan. 15, 1849
Rufus W. Griswold to John S. Hart, July 1, 1850
Rufus W. Griswold to H. C. Baird, Feb. 17, 1853
Sarah Josepha Hale to Rufus W. Griswold, Oct. 17,
1848
Sarah Josepha Hale to Rufus W. Griswold, April 7,
1849
Louisa J. Hall to Rufus W. Griswold, July 4, 1848
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Rufus W. Griswold, April 27,
1842
Elizabeth Kinney to Rufus W. Griswold, Sept. 22, 1849
John Keese to Rufus W. Griswold, Feb. 26, 1842
Estelle Lewis to Rufus W. Griswold, Nov. 13, 1848
Estelle Lewis to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 7 [1849)
Estelle Lewis to Rufus W. Griswold, Jan. 22 [1849]
Estelle Lewis to Rufus W. Griswold, Aug. 20, 1849
Estelle Lewis to Rufus W. Griswold, Nov. 3, 1849
Estelle Lewis to Rufus W. Griswold, April 14, 1855
Caroline May to Rufus W. Griswold, June 28, 1848
353
Thomas B. Read to Rufus W. Griswold, July 27, 1848
Caroline Sawyer to Rufus W. Griswold, Sept. 2, 1848
Lydia Sigourney to John S. Hart, March 4, 1851
Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Rufus W. Griswold, [May] 17, ;
1842 |
Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Rufus W. Griswold, June 23,
1842
Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Rufus W. Griswold, August
1842 I
Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Rufus W. Griswold, n.d. j
Elizabeth Oakes Smith to "Kate Carol," n.d. |
Sarah Helen Whitman to Frances Osgood, [1848]
Sarah Helen Whitman to Rufus W. Griswold, Feb. 13,
|
PSt— Fred Lewis Pattee Library, Pennsylvania State '
University |
Sara J. Lippincott to Ann Lynch, Dec. 19, 1848 ;
RPB-JH— John Hay Library, Brown University j
Phoebe Cary to John S. Hart, Oct. 8, 1851 |
"Grace Greenwood" to Ann Lynch, Dec. 11, 1848
Sarah Josepha Hale to John W. Whitman, May 21, 1828
Ann Lynch to Sarah Helen Whitman, Jan. 31, 1848
Ann Lynch to Sarah Helen Whitman, Feb. 21, 1848
Ann Lynch to Sarah Helen Whitman, March 10, 1848 j
Frances Osgood to Sarah Helen Whitman, March 26, 1848 j
Frances Osgood to "Mother," April 23, 1849
Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Sarah Helen Whitman, n.d.
Sarah Helen Whitman to Rufus W. Griswold, Oct. 28,
1849
Sarah Helen Whitman to ----- , [March 1857]
Sarah Helen Whitman to Julia Deane Freeman, [Sept. 25,t
1857] 1
Sarah Helen Whitman to Rufus W. Griswold, June 29,
n.y. !
TxU— Humanities Research Center, University of Texas
Rufus W. Griswold to Orville James Victor, Aug. 7,
1855
Lydia Sigourney to ----- , March 22, 1851
354 |
ViU— Alderman Library— University of Virginia
Rufus W. Griswold to Sara J. Clarke, n.d.
Caroline May to Rufus W. Griswold, May 1, 1848
Caroline May to Rufus W. Griswold, n.d.
Thomas B. Read to Lydia Sigourney, March 13, 1848
Lydia Sigourney to Sara J. Lippincott, March 8, 1854
Sarah Helen Whitman to John Ingram, Sept. 29, 1874
Sarah Helen Whitman to John Ingram, [1874]
355

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