Lucy Larcom
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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 Norton is a New England town, town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States, and contains the villages of Norton Center, Massachusetts, Norton Center and Chartley, Massachusetts, Chartley. The population was ...
, 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 ''Our Young Folks: an Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls'' was a monthly United States children’s magazine, published between January 1865 and December 1873. It was printed in Boston by Ticknor and Fields from 1865 to 1868, and then by James ...
'', which merged with '' St. Nicholas Magazine'' in 1874. In 1889, Larcom published one of the best-known accounts of
New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
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 Beverly Farms is a neighborhood comprising the eastern part of the city of Beverly, Massachusetts, in Massachusetts's North Shore region, about 20 miles north of Boston. Beverly Farms is an oceanfront community with a population of about 3,500, ...
and
Lowell, Massachusetts Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. Alongside Cambridge, It is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of ...
. Among her earlier and best-known poems are "Hannah Binding Shoes," and "The Rose Enthroned." Larcom's earliest contribution to the ''
Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', when the poet
James Russell Lowell James Russell Lowell (; February 22, 1819 – August 12, 1891) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that ri ...
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 The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
. 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.


Early years and education

Lucy Larcom was born in
Beverly, Massachusetts Beverly is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, and a suburb of Boston. The population was 42,670 at the time of the 2020 United States Census. A resort, residential, and manufacturing community on the Massachusetts North Shore, Beverly incl ...
on March 5, 1824 to Lois and Benjamin Larcom. She was the ninth of ten children, eight of whom were daughters. According to her autobiography, ''A New England Girlhood, outlined from memory'', Beverly was a small village at this time where she was able to play with neighbor children. She developed an early interest in reading and writing which she developed by reading children's fiction of the period. Titles included '' Alonzo and Melissa, The Children of the Abbey,'' and collective fairy tales. She borrowed books from the Sabbath-school library, including ''
The Pilgrim's Progress ''The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come'' is a 1678 Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and a progenitor of ...
.'' Other favorites from a
circulating library A circulating library (also known as lending libraries and rental libraries) lent books to subscribers, and was first and foremost a business venture. The intention was to profit from lending books to the public for a fee. Overview Circulating li ...
included '' The Scottish Chiefs,
Paul and Virginia ''Paul et Virginie'' (sometimes known in English as ''Paul and Virginia'') is a novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, first published in 1788. The novel's title characters are friends since birth who fall in love. The story is set ...
,
Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan ...
,'' and ''
The Arabian Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...
.'' Again according to her autobiography, at the age of seven she wrote and self-published multiple collections of poetry. This period of her life ended when her father died in 1832, leaving her mother as a widow with ten children to raise. Mr. Larcom's death coincided with the rise of the
Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
in Lowell. The Lowell Mills were hiring young women as factory workers and older women to run the boarding houses where the Lowell Mill Girls lived. Mrs. Larcom found employment as a boarding house supervisor while Lucy and her siblings found employment in the mills. While in Lowell, she helped her mother with household work in the intervals between her hours of school and work.


Career


Lowell Mill Girl

At age eleven, in 1835, she began working at
Boott Mills The Boott Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were a part of an extensive group of cotton mills, built in 1835 alongside a power canal system in this important cotton town. Their founder was Kirk Boott, one of the early mill owners in Lowell. Today, ...
, a
cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning (textiles), spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Althou ...
in Lowell, as a
doffer A doffer is someone who removes ("doffs") bobbins, pirns or spindles holding spun fiber such as cotton or wool from a spinning frame and replaces them with empty ones. Historically, spinners, doffers, and sweepers each had separate tasks that w ...
, to earn extra money for her family. She was among the very youngest of those employed at the mills. Her first work as a Lowell operative was in a spinning-room, doffing and replacing the
bobbin A bobbin or spool is a spindle or cylinder, with or without flanges, on which yarn, thread, wire, tape or film is wound. Bobbins are typically found in industrial textile machinery, as well as in sewing machines, fishing reels, tape measure ...
s, after which she tended a spinning-frame and then a dressing-frame, while looking out windows towards the river. Later, she was employed in a "cloth-room," considered to be a more agreeable working-place because of its fewer hours of confinement, its cleanliness, and the absence of machinery. The last two years of her Lowell life, which covered in all a period of about ten years, were spent in that room, not in measuring cloth, but as bookkeeper, recording the number of pieces and bales. There, she pursued her studies during leisure moments, some textbooks in mathematics, grammar, English or German literature usually laying open on her desk. Here, as in her earlier childhood, she put words to her visions through verses and by telling herself stories. Of those days, Larcom stated,— "While yet a child, I used to consider it special good fortune that my home was at Lowell. There was a frank friendliness and sincerity in the social atmosphere that wrought upon me unconsciously, and made the place pleasant to live in. People moved about their every-day duties with purpose and zest, and were genuinely interested in one another; while in the towns on the seaboard it sometimes was as if every man's house was his castle in almost a feudal sense, where the family shut themselves in, on the defensive against intruders." Still, she never lost her love and allegiance to the seaside area where she was born, while frequent visits kept up the charm, and gave her links to her home town. The ten years that Larcom spent at the mills made a huge impact on her. The ''
Lowell Offering The ''Lowell Offering'' was a monthly periodical collected contributed works of poetry and fiction by the female textile workers (young women ge 15–35known as the Lowell Mill Girls) of the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills of the early Americ ...
'', 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," and many of her verses and essays were found in its volumes. Some of those ''Lowell Offering'' essays appeared afterwards in ''Similitudes'', her first published work. 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 John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Frequently listed as one of the fireside poets, he was influenced by the Scottish poet ...
, who was then in Lowell editing a
Free Soil The Free Soil Party was a short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery into ...
journal. He became her friend, showing his real interest in her at once by criticising her share in the written contributions of the evening. She was then very young, but it was the beginning of an interest and gratitude that continued mutually in an established friendship. Afterward, when she had come to know and dearly love Whittier's sister, Elizabeth ("Lizzie"), the three spent time together. During happy sojourns at Salisbury Beach, near the respective homes at
Amesbury Amesbury () is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It is known for the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge which is within the parish. The town is claimed to be the oldest occupied settlement in Great Britain, having been first settle ...
and Beverly, in visits at Amesbury, in counsel and work together, out of which in recent time have grown the beautiful compilations of ''Child-life'', and ''Songs of Three Centuries'', their lives ran near together and contributed the one to the other.


Illinois

One after another, Larcom's sisters married out of the home, until only two remained. At about twenty years of age, Larcom accompanied the oldest of the Larcom sisters in Lowell, Emeline, to the then wild prairies of Illinois. Here, she shared in the efforts of a clergyman's household in pioneer times. A truly pioneer life was theirs as they moved many times from place to place, dependent upon who summoned the clergyman. Somewhere in this prairie Larcom taught school in a vacated log building to a neighborhood. Her students came from small colonies within this radius. It was in the corner of a big township which included three counties. 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 for three months; and once, when the time for payment arrived, and her brother-in-law visited the committee-man whose duty it was to make it, his reminder was met with the rather startled remark, as if the subject had never presented itself in so strong a light before:— "Forty dollars! Well, that's a lot o' money to pay a young woman for three months' teaching'! She oughta know considerable!" When the official was reassured by a statement of what Larcom's antecedents in study and achievement had been, he replied:— "Well, that's a good deal for her to ha' done!" before handing over the money. 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.


Back to Beverly

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. She remained there for six years, conducting classes in rhetoric, English literature, and composition, while sometimes adding history, mental and moral science, or botany. Larcom's health began after these few years to suffer from such a constant strain of teaching work that she had to relinquish regular employment, although, from time to time, she lectured upon literature, or taught classes in various young ladies' schools of Boston. Her first poem in the ''Atlantic'' was "The Rose Enthroned" and it is remembered as her greatest inspiration. It was a parable-epic of creation with twenty-one four-line stanzas. Previously to this,— as far back as during her early residence in Illinois,— some poems were published with the name, and some slight sketch of the writer, in Griswold's ''Female Poets of America''; and at about the same time, verses of hers were printed in ''Sartain's Magazine''. During 1852-53, she wrote frequently for the ''National Era'', of which Mr. Whittier was corresponding editor. Later, the ''Independent'' and the ''Boston Congregationalist'', and various other magazines received and published her contributions. "Hannah Binding Shoes" appeared first in the New York ''Crayon''; perhaps no single poem of hers was better known or more admired. When ''Our Young Folks'' magazine was started, Larcom became one of its assistant editors. Subsequently, for a year or two, she was the leading editor. For the next seven years, she lived quietly and independently at Beverly Farms. 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 Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson (February 8, 1825 – December 22, 1911) worked as a bobbin doffer in a Massachusetts cotton mill and was involved in a turnout, became a poet and author, and played an important role in the women's suffrage movement i ...
, who worked in the Lowell mills at the same time. Robinson also became a poet and author; later, she was prominent in the women's suffrage movement. Both contributed to the literary magazine ''Lowell Offering''.


Death and legacy

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 Beverly High School is one of two four-year public high schools in Beverly, Massachusetts, United States, the other being the smaller Northshore Academy. It has an enrollment of approximately 1,300 students and is accredited by the Massachuset ...
. A theatre built in Beverly in 1912 was named the
Larcom Theatre The Larcom Theatre is a 600-seat auditorium located at 13 Wallis Street in Beverly, Massachusetts and offers live music, theatrical productions, ballet, and comedy. From 1985 through 2012 the Larcom Theatre housed the two-hour Le Grand David pr ...
Music and Performing Arts after Larcom as well. Larcom Mountain, located in the
Ossipee Mountains The Ossipee Mountains are a small mountain range in the New England state of New Hampshire, United States. The remains of an ancient volcanic ring dike,Hall, Anthony, ''Igneous Petrology,'' Longman, 1987 p.75 - 76 they lie north of Lake Winnipesa ...
in
New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
, is named after her, as she frequented the area during the late 1800s. At Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, the Larcom Dormitory is named after her. Rushlight Literary Magazine, which she founded, is still in publication today. Larcom's legacy is honored in Lowell, Massachusetts, where she worked as a "mill girl" at the Boott Mills, and as such, the Lucy Larcom Park was named after her to honor her works of literature that recounted her life at the mills. The park is located between the two Lowell High School buildings, and excerpts from her writings can be found on monuments, statues and other works of art throughout the park.


Style and themes

Larcom's later writings, assumed a deeply religious tone, in which the faith of her whole life found complete expression. In retrospection, she wrote ''Idyl of Work''. Notwithstanding the fact that she really meant to set forth the image she had in her mind of her own elder sister, she unconsciously gave herself also, perhaps, through family likeness, in some touches of her portrayal of "Esther" in the ''Idyl''. In her ''Idyl of Work'' and also in ''A New England Girlhood'', Larcom described her early life. In the ''Idyl'', the mill-life of forty or fifty years earlier was portrayed.


Selected works

*''An Idyll of Work'' (1875) *"Among Lowell Mill-Girls: A Reminiscence", ''Atlantic Monthly'' (November 1881) * ''Wheaton Seminary; A Semi-Centennial Sketch'', Cambridge. Riverside Press (1885) *''A New England Girlhood'' (1889) *''As It Is in Heaven'' (1893) * "Landscape in American Poetry." New York. Appleton and Company,(1879)


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Lucy Larcom
at cyberhymnal {{DEFAULTSORT:Larcom, Lucy 1824 births 1893 deaths 19th-century American Episcopalians 19th-century American women writers 19th-century American poets 19th-century American journalists Textile workers American women poets People from Beverly, Massachusetts Poets from Massachusetts Wheaton College (Massachusetts) faculty American magazine editors Women magazine editors Educators from Massachusetts American women non-fiction writers Wikipedia articles incorporating text from A Woman of the Century American women academics