Woman of the Century/Anne Reeve Aldrich

ANNE REEVE ALDRICH. ALDRICH, Miss Anne Reeve, poet and novelist, born in New York City, 25th April, 1866. From her earliest childhood she showed a fondness for composition, spending hours from the time she learned to print in writing stories and verses, although she had the usual healthy childish tastes for romping and all out-of-door sports. At the death of her father, which occurred in her eighth year, her mother removed to the country, where she at first took charge of her daughter's education, which was afterward carried on by competent tutors. Miss Aldrich displayed remarkable proficiency in compostion and rhetoric, which was counterbalanced by what she herself calls an amusing inaptitude for mathematics, so that, while she was translating French and Latin authors for amusement, she was also struggling over a simple arithmetic, whose tear-blotted leaves she still preserves. In her fifteenth year a friend suggested to her to send a poem to "Scribner's Magazine." Although the verses were returned, with them she received a friendly note of encouragement and praise from the editor, who from that time often criticized the young girl's work. She wrote constantly and voluminously, usually destroying her work from month to month, so that but few of her earlier verses are extant. She also read widely, her taste inclining to the early English poets and dramatists and to mediæval literature. When she was seventeen, her first published poem appeared in "Lippincott's Magazine," followed by others in the "Century" and various periodicals. In 1885 Miss Aldrich's mother moved back to New York, where they now reside. Her first book was "The Rose of Flame and Other Poems of Love" (New York, 1889), and she has published one novel, "The Feet of Love" (New York, 1890). Miss Aldrich dislikes country life and is fond of society. Her family is of English extraction. Her ancestors were Tories in Revolutionary days, and their large estates were confiscated by the American government because of their allegiance to the crown.