The Selected Letters of Elizabeth Stoddard

Biographical Notes

xlix Biographical Notes  elizabetH akers allen (1832–1911) was born in Strong, Maine. After her first husband, Marshall S. M. Taylor, abandoned her and their infant daughter, Akers Allen worked as an assistant editor for the Portland Transcript and began to publish poetry under the pseudonym “Florence Percy.” In 1855, she published her first book of poems, Forest-Buds, fromtheWoodsofMaine.Afterdivorcingherhusbandin1857,AkersAllen met and married Benjamin “Paul” Akers, a sculptor from Maine with a growing national reputation. Akers was an invalid when the couple married, and he died of tuberculosis in 1861; their infant child died as well. During the Civil War, Akers Allen worked in the War Office in Washington, D.C., and also helped nurse wounded soldiers. In 1866, she published Poems in Ticknor and Fields’s prestigious blue-and-gold series. Soon after, a number of amateur poets claimed authorship of her most popular poem, “Rock Me to Sleep,” which she had published in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post in 1860 as well as in her 1866 collection. The resulting controversy almost cost Akers Allen her credibility as a professional writer. After marrying her third husband, Elijah M. Allen, in 1865, she moved to Richmond, Virginia, remaining there until 1872, when she and her husband returned east. It was at this time that she met Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard, after submitting a poem to Richard for publication in the Aldine. Elizabeth Stoddard and Elizabeth Akers Allen maintained a friendship and correspondence from that spring until the early 1880s. In 1874, Akers Allen returned to Portland, where she became the editor of the Portland Advertiser. She left the newspaper in 1881 and moved with her husband to New Jersey. In 1883, Akers Allen seems to have become angry with the Stoddards over the omission of her work from the third volume of English Verse, an anthology of nineteenth-century poetry edited by Richard and William James Linton. Later in life, she would claim that the Stoddards dropped her acquaintance once she left the Advertiser because she could be of l no use to them professionally. After retiring from the Advertiser, Akers Allen published several collections of poems, including The Silver Bridge (1885), The High-Top Sweeting (1891), and The Sunset Song (1902). She died at age seventy-nine. The majority of her papers, including more than forty letters from Stoddard, are at Colby College. andrew variCk stoUt antHony (1835–1906) was a prominent American engraver. He provided or supervised the engravings for many expensive illustrated editions of popular nineteenth-century works, especially poems. During the Civil War, he served as the art manager of the New York Illustrated News under the editorship of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. After the war he supervised the illustrations for the publishing firm James R. Osgood & Company. Anthony later managed and selected artists for Our Young Folks, an illustrated children’s magazine, for Ticknor and Fields. It is not clear how Anthony met the Stoddards, thoughhiswife,MaryAnthony,wasinvolvedinNewYorkliterarycircles and the couples corresponded with many of the same authors and artists throughout their lives. Extant letters from Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard date from 1890 through 1900. Anthony’s papers are primarily located at Houghton Library, Harvard University. wilson barstow jr. (1831–1869)wasStoddard’sclosestsiblingand was younger than her by seven years. Wilson moved to New York City in the late 1840s, and Stoddard visited him there on a few occasions. In the early 1850s he considered moving to California. Initially, Stoddard thought she would travel with him, but she married Richard Stoddard in December 1852 and moved to New York City permanently. Wilson ultimately sailed for California in February 1853, and by the end of the year, another Barstow brother, Samuel, had joined him. The Stoddards named their first son, born in June 1855, in honor of Wilson. Wilson BarstowreturnedfromCaliforniainlate1857orearly1858andlivednear the Stoddards in New York City until the Civil War began. In September 1861 Wilson enlisted in the Union Army and became an aide-de-camp for General John Dix. By the end of the war, he had been promoted to brevetbrigadiergeneral.Aftermusteringoutofthearmyin1866,Wilson had trouble settling on a career and went into debt, privately applying to some of the Stoddards’ friends for money. In early 1867 he was ap- li pointed assistant appraiser of the port of New York City. Wilson died of pneumonia at the Stoddard house. His papers from the Civil War, which include his letters to Stoddard, are housed...