Bessie Anderson Stanley (born Caroline Elizabeth Anderson, March 25, 1879 – October 2, 1952) was an American writer, the author of the
poem ''Success'' (''What is
success
Success is the state or condition of meeting a defined range of expectations. It may be viewed as the opposite of failure. The criteria for success depend on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. One person mig ...
?'' or ''What Constitutes Success''?), which is often incorrectly attributed to
Ralph Waldo Emerson[''"What Constitutes Success": A $250 Prize Story by a Lincoln Woman'']
Lincoln Sentinel, November 30, 1905 (archived by Bill and Diana Sowers on Lincoln County, Kansas Genealogy & History website) or
Robert Louis Stevenson.
She was born in
Newton, Iowa, and married Arthur Jehu Stanley in 1900, living thereafter in
Lincoln, Kansas. Her poem was written in 1904 for a contest held in ''
Brown Book Magazine'',
[''The Truth behind the Poem "Success"]
(email exchange between Robin Olson and Bethanne Larson, Stanley's great-granddaughter, on "Robin's Web" website) by
George Livingston Richards Co. of
Boston, Massachusetts[ Mrs. Stanley submitted the words in the form of an essay, rather than as a poem. The competition was to answer the question "What is success?" in 100 words or less. Mrs. Stanley won the first prize of $250.
Written in verse form, it reads:
The poem was in '' Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'' in the 1930s or 1940s but was mysteriously removed in the 1960s.][ It was again included in the seventeenth edition. However, it does appear in a 1911 book, ''More Heart Throbs,'' volume 2, on pages 1–2.]Grosset & Dunlap
Grosset & Dunlap is a New York City-based publishing house founded in 1898.
The company was purchased by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1982 and today is part of Penguin Random House through its subsidiary Penguin Group.
Today, through the Penguin Gro ...
of New York, 1911, by Chapple Publishing Company Ltd. of Boston, MA (fro
''Success: Finding a Gem among the Litter in the Literature''
Chuck Anastasia, Coolspark blog, February 24, 2007)
Misattribution
Ann Landers (and her sister Abby) are also said to have misattributed the poem to Emerson and her concession to a public correction is in ''The Ann Landers Encyclopedia''.[
]
Personal life
Bessie Anderson Stanley died in 1952, aged 73. The verse is inscribed on her gravestone in Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas.
References
''"Success"''
Mila Tasseva for The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, April 15, 2003
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stanley, Bessie Anderson
Poets from Kansas
American women poets
1952 deaths
1879 births
People from Newton, Iowa
People from Lincoln Center, Kansas
Poets from Iowa
20th-century American poets
20th-century American women writers