I lived from 1850-1943.
I was from the United States, and am in the Americas category.
Laura Elizabeth Richards was born February 27, 1850, Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a social reformer who later gained fame as an abolitionist and was the founder of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts school for the blind. Her mother was the poet Julia Ward Howe who is best known as the author of "Battle Hymn of the Republic".
Read full description by Nam...
When Richards was still quite young she was introduced to languages through her mother's love of music. She explains this in her autobiography, Stepping Westward,
When we gathered delightedly round the piano . . . we soon began to sing German songs, many of them brought back from Heidelberg by Uncle Sam Ward . . . sparkling French songs whose gayety was enchanting . . . Italian songs that flowed like water under moonlight; to say nothing of English and Scottish ballads without end.
We never knew that we were studying French, German, Italian; that we were acquiring a vocabulary; that ear and voice were being trained by a past misterss in the management of both.
When she was seventeen, Richards accompanied her parents and her sister Julia to Europe where she visited London, Rome, Venice, Athens, and Antwerp. In the winter of 1869, she became engaged to Henry Richards, who by then was a Harvard classmate of her brother's. They married on June 17, 1871, the year in which he graduated from Harvard University. They honeymooned in Europe.
When they came back from their honeymoon, the Richards returned to Laura's parents home and living their with them and Richards' younger sister. Children and books came hurridly as Richards explains in her autobiography,
Four years saw the birth of the first three of my seven children, Alice, Rosalind, and Henry . . . I had always rhymed easily; now, with the coming of the babies, and the consequent weeks and months of quiet, came a prodigious welling up of rhymes, mostly bringing their tunes ... with them. I wrote, and sang, and wrote, and could not stop. The first baby was plump and placid, with a broad, smooth back which made an excellent writing desk. She lay on her front, across my lap; I wrote on her back, the writing pad quite as steady as the writing of jingles required.
Through the years Richards published many books, all mainly children's books, and as any family would have, there were struggles, but, in the end, life turned out happily.
Richards died on January 14, 1943.
biblio:
readseries.com (they have more of a complete biography)
Popular poetry
Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
11 lines, 21 comments
I sat beside a lady fair,
A lady grave and sweet;
40 lines, 2 comments
Little Prince Tatters has lost his cap!
Over the hedge he threw it;
26 lines, 5 comments
Oh! little loveliest lady mine,
What shall I send for your valentine?
10 lines, 2 comments
This is the Wiggledywasticus,
Very remarkable beast.
29 lines, 3 comments
In Araby, in Araby,
In Araby the blest,
26 lines, 3 comments
WHERE Helen sits, the darkness is so deep,
18 lines, 2 comments
The Rummy-jums, the Rummy-jums,
Are very funny people;
37 lines
[A Lesson in Politeness]
Alphonso, Alphonso, Alphonso and Arabella
20 lines
Once a Gargoyle and a Griffin
Thought they'd go and take their tiffin
55 lines
Start a forum topic about this poet
|
|
