Emma Bell Miles
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Emma Bell Miles (October 19, 1879 – March 19, 1919) was a writer, poet, and artist whose works capture the essence of the natural world and the culture of southern
Appalachia Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ca ...
.


Early life and education

Miles was born Emma Bell in
Evansville, Indiana Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in ...
on October 19, 1879. Her parents, Benjamin Franklin and Martha Ann Mirick Bell, were both schoolteachers. Emma's early childhood was spent in
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, a small town on the
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near
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. When she was nine, her family moved to the area that is now
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and then to Walden's Ridge (now Signal Mountain), Tennessee. A talented young woman, she left home to study art in
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. Homesickness forced her to return to Walden's Ridge after only two years. There she fell in love with George Franklin Miles, (known as Frank) and, only three weeks after her mother's death, married him in spite of her family's opposition. Emma and Frank had five children, twin daughters Jean and Judith in 1902, Joe in 1905, Katharine “Kitty” in 1907, and Frank Mirick “Mark” in 1909. Emma was devastated in 1913 when Frank Mirick died from
scarlet fever Scarlet fever, also known as Scarlatina, is an infectious disease caused by ''Streptococcus pyogenes'' a Group A streptococcus (GAS). The infection is a type of Group A streptococcal infection (Group A strep). It most commonly affects childr ...
.


Career as writer

Emma and Frank struggled to make ends meet and often their major source of income was from Emma's
short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...
and poems. She also made money selling her art, often in the form of small items such as greeting cards. In 1904 Emma sold her first poem to ''Harper's Monthly.'' An eleven-verse poem titled “The Difference,” appeared in the March issue. She followed that up the next month with another poem, “Homesick,” written when she was living in St. Louis. Emma's major success wa
''The Spirit of the Mountains''
published in 1905. This genre-defying book has elements of local color, short story, travel narrative, personal memoir, and
cultural analysis As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the arts, humanities, social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena and to interpret cultural representatio ...
. The music chapter in ''Spirit of the Mountains'' was first published in 1904 as an article titled “Some Real American Music” in ''Harper's Monthly''. It was probably the first appreciation of
Appalachia Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ca ...
n music to appear in a popular magazine, and it was certainly one of the first to appear anywhere at all, following by only four years the early academic writing on the subject by William Wells Newell in the ''
Journal of American Folklore The ''Journal of American Folklore'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Folklore Society. Since 2003, this has been done on its behalf by the University of Illinois Press. The journal has been published since the society' ...
''. She also wrote articles for local newspapers, the most popular of which were entitled
The Fountain Square Conversations
', a fanciful series in which birds gather at a fireman's memorial fountain in downtown
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and have philosophical conversations on life. Emma's book, ''Our Southern Birds,'' was published in 1922. Her journals also contain several references to manuscripts of other works, including ''The Good Gray Mother'' and ''Our Southern Flowers,'' that were never published and have not been located. Emma's poetry, journals, and short stories were later published in ''Strains from a Dulcimore'' (1930), ''Once I Too Had Wings: The Journals of Emma Bell Miles, 1908-1918'' (2014), and ''The Common Lot and Other Stories: The Published Short Fiction, 1908-1921'' (2016). Emma and Frank had a difficult marriage. They and their children often suffered from poverty and hunger, and Emma was sometimes bitter about Frank's inability to find paying work to support the family. At one point she notes in her journal that her daughter, Jean, had run away and then she adds “I don't blame her.” Emma and Frank separated a number of times, and during these times Emma lived in the Francis Willard Home for Women in Chattanooga, in order to make money in town. Emma proved to be a darling of society, and she often gave lectures which were highly regarded and well received. Emma also held the post of writer-in-residence at
Lincoln Memorial University Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) is a private university in Harrogate, Tennessee. LMU's campus borders on Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. As of fall 2019, it had 1,975 undergraduate and 2,892 graduate and professional students. LMU i ...
in Harrogate, Tennessee for one term. Yet no matter how much Emma enjoyed the intellectual life of the city, she always returned to her simple life on the mountain with her husband. For two months in 1914 Emma had a salary from the ''Chattanooga News'' and she was able to pay all of the family's bills. But life in the city would have been unbearable without weekends in the country and that June she became pregnant and had to give up the job. She wrote in her journal “All is lost now; my hope, my health all sacrificed to a man's pleasure...” She later adds “I have tried every way to escape what is coming, but for some reason the usual methods failed. Frank is kinder and more reasonable than he has ever been, and very sorry for what he has done...” Then, in August, she miscarried the baby. She had planned to return to her job at the ''Chattanooga News'' to pay back the hospital bills but, she notes in her journal, “this Frank positively refuses to let me do.” This life of continual poverty and the death of 3-year-old Frank Mirick eroded Emma Bell Miles's health. In 1915 she had been diagnosed with
tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
and, after spending several years in the Pine Breeze Sanitarium in
Chattanooga Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, ...
she died in a small house Frank had rented in what is now North Chattanooga. By this time her husband and the younger children were living with his parents while the twins, Jean and Judith, had been sent away to school. Emma Bell Miles died on March 19, 1919, and was buried in a simple grave in
Red Bank, Tennessee Red Bank is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 11,899 at the 2020 census . Red Bank is an enclave, being entirely surrounded by the city limits of Chattanooga. Red Bank is part of the Chattanooga, TN- GA, Metr ...
.


Legacy

Grace Toney Edwards Grace may refer to: Places United States * Grace, Idaho, a city * Grace (CTA station), Chicago Transit Authority's Howard Line, Illinois * Little Goose Creek (Kentucky), location of Grace post office * Grace, Carroll County, Missouri, an uninc ...
gave a talk on her at the
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in 2017.


Bibliography

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References


External links


"Some Real American Music" by Emma Bell Miles
in ''Harper's Magazine'': (1904), Volume 109. Google Books.
Some Real American Music -- Reexamined
Article about Miles' pioneering writing on American folk music, "Some Real American Music."
Emma Bell Miles Southern Appalachia art, correspondence, and journals, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Digital Collection
{{DEFAULTSORT:Miles, Emma Bell 1879 births 1919 deaths American women short story writers American short story writers American women poets Writers from Evansville, Indiana People from Red Bank, Tennessee Writers from Tennessee People from Signal Mountain, Tennessee Burials in Tennessee