ELIZABETH BOGART.
Miss Bogart has written only a few tales in prose, but they have all been of sterling excellence.
Her first tale, “The Effect of a Single Folly,” obtained a prize in the “Memorial,” an Annual published in Boston, 1828. It was her first attempt at story writing, and was completed and sent secretly, without being submitted to any of her friends for correction or improvement. In the course of a few months afterward, she received a copy of the book from the publishers, and found, to her surprise, that she had been successful in obtaining one of the two prizes offered. From that circumstance, she was induced to write occasional tales for her own amusement, and convey them through the medium of different periodicals to the public. In 1830 she obtained a second prize for a tale entitled “The Forged Note;” in 1844 another, for a domestic story, entitled “Arlington House;” and in 1849 the fourth, for “The Heiress, or Romance of Life.”[1]
She has written much more poetry than prose. The history of her mind in this respect is sketched with much beauty and simplicity in the following extract from a letter in reply to one making inquiries on this point. “My rhyming propensity,” says she, “commenced, I believe, with my earliest powers of thought, as I remember nothing previous to my first attempts at scribbling verses; but those youthful productions were invariably destroyed from a feeling of diffidence, and an utter impossibility of satisfying myself. My ideas of excellence in metrical composition, so
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- ↑ The titles of her other stories are as follows: “The Secrets of the Heart,” 1828; “The Cloaked Gentleman,” 1829; “Decourcy,” 1829; “The Family of Meredith,” 1830; “Traditions of the Visions of Armies in the Heavens,” 1844; “The Bachelor’s Wedding,” 1846; “Gertrude Wurtemburg,” 1848; “Love and Politics,” 1849; “Rose Winters,” 1849; “The Widow’s Daughter,” 1851; “The Auction, or the Wedding Coat,” and “Ada Danforth, or the Will,” not yet published.
