Lucy Larcom letter to Miss Dyer

Lucy Larcom (March 5, 1824 – April 17, 1893) was an American teacher, poet, and author. She was one of the first teachers at Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College) in Norton, Massachusetts, teaching there from 1854 to 1862.

During that time, she co-founded Rushlight Literary Magazine, a submission-based student literary magazine which is still published. From 1865 to 1873, she was the editor of the Boston-based Our Young Folks, which merged with St. Nicholas Magazine in 1874.[1][a] In 1889, Larcom published one of the best-known accounts of New England childhood of her time, A New England Girlhood, commonly used as a reference in studying antebellum American childhood; the autobiographical text covers the early years of her life in Beverly Farms and Lowell, Massachusetts.

Among her earlier and best-known poems are "Hannah Binding Shoes," and "The Rose Enthroned." Larcom's earliest contribution to the Atlantic Monthly, when the poet James Russell Lowell was its editor, a poem, that in the absence of signature, was attributed to Emerson by one reviewer. Also of note was "A Loyal Woman's No" which was a patriotic lyric and attracted considerable attention during the American Civil War.

Larcom was inclined to write on religious themes, and made two volumes of compilations from the world's great religious thinkers, Breathings of the Better Life (Boston, 1866) and Beckonings (Boston. 1886). Her last two books, As it is in Heaven (Boston, 1891) and The Unseen Friend (Boston, 1892), embodied much of her own thought on matters concerning the spiritual life.

At age eleven, in 1835, she began working at Boott Mills,[9] a cotton mill in Lowell, as a doffer, to earn extra money for her family. She was among the very youngest of those employed at the mills. There, she pursued her studies during leisure moments. The ten years that Larcom spent at the mills made a huge impact on her. The Lowell Offering, a magazine whose editors and contributors were "female operatives in the Lowell mills," was published 1839-1845, and soon after it was launched Larcom became one of its corps of writers. One of her first poems was entitled "The River."

It was at one of the meetings of the literary circle, established among the "mill girls", that Larcom first met the poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, who was then in Lowell editing a Free Soil journal. He became her friend, showing his real interest in her at once by criticising her share in the written contributions of the evening.

At about twenty years of age, Larcom accompanied the oldest of the Larcom sisters in Lowell, Emeline, to the then wild prairies of Illinois. She taught under the auspices of a district committee, before whom, previous to induction to office, the candidate was obliged to hold up her right hand and swear to acquaintance, sufficient to instruct from, with writing, spelling, arithmetic, and geography. Her salary was US$40 for three months.

During another sojourning, Larcom found herself in the neighborhood of an excellent young ladies' school. Switching from teacher to scholar, she spent three years at Monticello Female Seminary, following the full course of study. During the last two years, she took charge of the preparatory department of that institution.

Eventually, Larcom tired of life in the west, so she went back to Beverly, where, for a year or two, she taught a class of young ladies before accepting a position as teacher in Wheaton Female Seminary, at Norton.

Her first poem in the Atlantic was "The Rose Enthroned" and it is remembered as her greatest inspiration. She was published in Griswold's Female Poets of America; Sartain's Magazine,National Era, of which Mr. Whittier was corresponding editor, the Independent and the Boston Congregationalist. "Hannah Binding Shoes" appeared first in the New York Crayon. When Our Young Folks magazine was started, Larcom became one of its assistant editors.

In the spirit of ministry, she gathered together the compilation of Breathings of a Better Life. Roadside Poems, and Hillside and Seaside, were compilations from readings of nature. Childlife, Childlife in Prose, and Songs of Three Centuries, were pulled together in company with Whittier, and which he edited. The volume, Wild Roses of Cape Ann came after these.

Larcom served as a model for the change in women's roles in society. She was a friend of Harriet Hanson Robinson, who worked in the Lowell mills at the same time.

Larcom died at age 69 on April 17, 1893, in Boston and was buried in her hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts. Her influence is still felt in Beverly. A local literary magazine entitled The Larcom Review is named for her, as is the library at the Beverly High School. A theatre built in Beverly in 1912 was named the Larcom Theatre Music and Performing Arts after Larcom as well.