Nathalia Crane

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nathalia Clara Ruth Crane (11 August 1913 - 22 October 1998) was a poet and novelist who became famous as a child prodigy after the publication of her first book of poetry at age 10. Her poetry was first published in The New York Sun when she was only 9 years old, the paper unaware that she was a child. She later became a professor of English at San Diego State University.

After the publication of her second volume of poetry poet Edwin Markham implied that the publications were probably a hoax, stating "It seems impossible to me that a girl so immature could have written these poems. They are beyond the powers of a girl of twelve. The sophisticated viewpoint of sex ... knowledge of history and archeology found in these pages place them beyond the reach of any juvenile mind."

Critic Louis Untermeyer was an early promoter of Crane's work and stated "some of the critics explained the work by insisting that the child was some sort of medium, an instrument unaware of what was played upon it; others, considering the book a hoax, scorned the fact that any child could have written verses so smooth in execution and so remarkable in spiritual overtones" and that "The appeal of such lines is not that they have been written by a child but by a poet."

She was married first to Vete George Black (d. 1968) and later to Peter O'Reilly, who survived her.