The poetry of Helen Jackson unquestionably takes rank above that of any American woman. Emerson rated it above that of almost all American men. Her works include simple poetry of domestic life as well as love-poems of extraordinary intensity and imaginative fullness, furthermore, verses showing most intimate sympathy with external nature; and lastly, a few poems of the highest dignity and melody in the nature of odes, such as "A Christmas Symphony" and "A Funeral March."
The numerous lyrics of Elizabeth Oakes Smith, E. O. Kinney, Frances S. Osgood, Anne L. Botta, Sarah Helen Whitman, Maria Lowell, Harriet W. Sewall, Emily Judson and many other women poets of the last half century show a development corresponding to that traceable in the field of American fiction.
In recent times a large number of gifted women have contributed to the general chorus new notes of unusual strength and beauty. Many names deserve a place upon the honor roll; among them |Margaret J. Preston, Elizabeth Allen, Julia Dorr, Mary E. Bradley, Nora Perry, Mary C. Hudson, Margaret Sangster, Charlotte Bates, May Riley Smith, Edna Dean Proctor, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Alice Wellington Rollins, Edith Thomas, Emma Lazarus, Kate Osgood, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
In other branches of literature, to which comparatively few women have chosen to devote themselves, as for instance in history, several American women have shown remarkable talent and thoroughness.
First among these historians stands Mrs. Mercy Otis Warren, the same who with Mrs. Abigail Smith Adams, the wife of President John Adams, shared the belief that the Declaration of Independence should consider not the freedom of man alone, but that of woman also. Having warmly entered the contest between England and America, Mrs. Warren had corresponded with many of the leading men of the time; these often consulted her, and acknowledged the soundness of her judgment on many of the important events before and after the war. The most valuable of her writings appeared in 1805, under the title "The History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, interspersed with Biographical, Political, and Moral Observations."
The three volumes of this work, dedicated to George Washington, are valuable as a true record of the events and feelings of those great times.
To Martha Lamb the citizens of the metropolis on the Hudson River are indebted for a comprehensive "History of New York City." Agnes Laut penned a series of articles about the discovery of the farthest Northwest. Ellen Mackay
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