Meet the Author
Alice Cary
American · 1820–1871 · Poet and fiction writer
Portrait: Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
An Ohio farm-born poet who settled in New York City with her sister Phoebe and wrote popular verse and sketches of rural life.
1 StoryBites Edition1 Poem
Why read Alice Cary?
Cary wrote about the farms and seasons of the Ohio countryside where she grew up. Autumn, printed after her death, turns the end of summer into a string of personifications, with Summer slipping her golden collar and the wind making ‘cold and unsuccessful love.’ Read it to practice tracing figurative language, and to catch the sudden shift of the last stanza, when the speaker shuts the door on the withered world.
A life in six dates
- 1820Born on a farm near Cincinnati, Ohio
- 1850Moves to New York City, where her sister Phoebe soon joins her
- 1868Becomes the first president of Sorosis, a New York women’s club
- 1871Dies in New York City; Phoebe dies later the same year
- 1874The Last Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary is published, including Autumn
Themes across the work
The StoryBites Editions
Context that actually matters
Rural OhioCary grew up on a farm near Cincinnati, and her poems and her Clovernook sketches return to that landscape.
Poems in the popular pressMagazines and newspapers printed a steady stream of poems by women, and the Cary sisters built their careers that way.
The Cary sisters’ New York homeThe sisters held regular Sunday evening gatherings that drew writers, editors, and reformers.