Alice Cary

Alice Cary (April 26, 1820 - February 12, 1871) was an American poet, and the sister of fellow poet Phoebe Cary (1824-1871).

Biography

Alice Cary was born on April 26, 1820, in Mount Healthy, Ohio near Cincinnati. [Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. "The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States". New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 297. ISBN 0195031865] Her parents lived on a farm bought by Robert Cary in 1813 in what is now North College Hill, Ohio. He called the 27 acres Clovernook Farm. The farm was 10 miles north of Cincinnati, a good distance from schools, and the father could not afford to give their large family of nine children a very good education. But Alice and her sister Phoebe were fond of reading and studied all they could.

While the sisters were raised in a Universalist household and held political and religious views that were liberal and reformist, they often attended Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist services and were friendly with ministers of all these denominations and others. According to Phoebe,

Though singularly liberal and unsectarian in her views, [Alice] always preserved a strong attachment to the church of her parents, and, in the main, accepted its doctrines. Caring little for creeds or minor points, she most firmly believed in human brotherhood as taught by Jesus; and in a God whose loving kindness is so deep and so unchangeable that there can never come a time even the vilest sinner, in all the ages of eternity, when if he arises and go to Him, his Father will not see him afar off, and have compassion upon him. [June Edwards. " [http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/carysisters.html The Cary Sisters] ". Accessed Nov. 29, 2007.]

When Alice was 17 and Phoebe 13, they began to write verses, which were printed in newspapers. Alice's first major poem, "The Child of Sorrow," was published in 1838 and was praised by influential critics including Edgar Allan Poe, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, and Horace Greeley. [Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988. ISBN 0674065654. p. 398] Alice and her sister were included in the influential anthology "The Female Poets of America" prepared by Rufus Griswold. [Bayless, Joy. "Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor". Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943. p. 213] Griswold encouraged publishers to put forth a collection of the sisters' poetry. In 1849, a Philadelphia publisher accepted the book, "Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary", and Griswold wrote the preface, left unsigned. By the spring of 1850, Alice and Griswold were often corresponding through letters which were often flirtatious. This correspondence ended by the summer of that year. [Bayless, Joy. "Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor". Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943. p. 214–215]

The anthology made Alice and Phoebe well-known, and in 1850 they moved to New York City, where they devoted themselves to writing, and garnered much fame. There, they also hosted receptions on Sunday evenings which drew notable figures including P. T. Barnum, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and John Greenleaf Whittier.Kane, Paul. "Poetry of the American Renaissance". New York: George Braziller, 1995: 297. ISBN 0-8076-1398-3]

In addition to poetry, Alice wrote several stories in prose, among which were "The Clovernook Children" and "Snow Berries, a Book for Young Folks". She died of tuberculosis in 1871 in New York at age 51. The pallbearers at her funeral included P. T. Barnum and Horace Greeley. Her burial is in the Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.The Cary Home stands today on the east side of Hamilton Avenue (US 127), on the campus of the Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in North College Hill.

Publication

* Mary C. Ames, "Memorials of Alice and Phœbe Cary" (twenty-sixth edition, 1885)

References

External links

* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=cary&GSfn=Alice+&GSbyrel=all&GSdy=1871&GSdyrel=all&GSob=n&GRid=7686823& Alice Carry at Find-a-grave.com]
* [http://college.hmco.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/early_nineteenth/cary_al.html Alice Cary (1820-1871)]
* [http://www.cincinnatimemory.org/gsdl/collect/greaterc/archives/HASH01c4/f0c1caab.dir/ocp001525pccpc.jpgCarry Cottage]
* [http://www.cincinnatimemory.org/gsdl/collect/greaterc/archives/HASH01e9/0921706e.dir/ocp001530pccnb.jpgCary Oak]