The Female Poets of America (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Female Poets of America

Several persons are mentioned in this volume whose lives have been no holydays of leisure: those, indeed, who have not in some way been active in practical duties, are exceptions to the common rule. One was a slave one a domestic servant - one a factory girl: and there are many in the list who had no other time to give to the pursuits of literature but such as was stolen from a frugal and industrious housewifery, from the exhausting cares of teaching, or the fitful repose of sickness. These illustrations of the truth, that the muse is no respecter of conditions, are especially interesting In a country where, though equality is an axiom, it is not a reality, and where prejudice reverses in the application all that theory has affirmed in words. The pro priety of bringing before the world compositions produced amid humble and laborious occupations, has been vindicated by Bishop Potter, with so much force and elegance, in his introduction to the Poems of Maria James, that I regret that the limits of this preface forbid my copying what I should wish every reader of this book to be acquainted with.

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