Born: April 26, 1820
Died: February 12, 1871
Ohio connection: Birth
Mount Healthy
Alice Cary was born in 1820 in Mount Healthy, Ohio, on a homestead near Cincinnati. The daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Jessup Cary, she was the fourth of eleven children and a sister of author/poet Phoebe Cary. Alice, who was educated at home, developed a great love of reading in her childhood. After the publication in 1838 of her first poem, “The Child of Sorrows,” in The Sentinel (a local Cincinnati newspaper), Alice continued to write poems and short stories and to have her work published without pay. It wasn’t until 1847 that she was paid for her writing when it began to appear in journals such as Ladies’ Repository and Graham’s Magazine. Her work was praised by Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Greeley, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Such praise led to the publication of the Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cates in 1850.
In 1850, Alice moved to New York City, possibly with the idea that her writing career could advance more effectively there. She wrote regularly for popular literary magazines, and her work included poetry, novels, and short stories. Her first short story collection, Clovernook, or, Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West, was published in 1852. Other works followed including Hagar, a Story of To-Day, (1852), Lyra and Other Poems (1853), Married, Not Mated, or, How They Lived at Woodside and Throckmorton Hall (1856), Ballads, Lyrics and Hymns (1866), and Snow-Berries: A Book for Young Folk, (1867).
In 1851, Alice’s sisters Phoebe and Elmina joined her in New York, where they lived together and wrote. From 1858 until her death, Alice continued to write for literary magazines including Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, the Independent, and the New York Ledger.
Alice Cary was the first president of Sorosis, the first professional women’s club in the United States.
Alice Cary died of tuberculosis at her home in New York City on February 12, 1871. She was 50 years old.
Additional Resources
Wikipedia article: Alice Cary