Lucy Larcom

Lucy Larcom with facsimile signature

Lucy Larcom (March 5, 1824 – April 17, 1893, aged 69) was an American poet.

Biography

Larcom was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1824, the ninth of ten children and died in Boston in 1893. She left Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1835 to work cotton mills in Lowell from the ages of 11 to 21 as a doffer. As a mill girl she hoped to earn some extra money for her family. While working at the mills in Lowell, Lucy made a huge impact. She wrote and published many of her songs, poems, and letters describing her life at the mills. Her idealistic poems caught the attention of John Greenleaf Whittier. Larcom served as a model for the change in women's roles in society.

She was a friend of Harriet Hanson Robinson, who worked in the Lowell mills at the same time, and who also became a poet and author. Much later, Harriet Hanson Robinson was to become prominent in the women's suffrage movement.^[1]

In the 1840s (circa 1846), Larcom taught at a school in Illinois before returning to Massachusetts. From 1865 to 1873, she was the editor of the Boston-based Our Young Folks, which merged with St. Nicholas Magazine in 1874.^[2][3]

Larcom penned one of the best accounts of New England childhood of her time, A New England Girlhood, commonly used as a reference in studying early American childhood.

Family

Larcom had nine siblings. Her father died when she was young she was 8 years old. Larcom was never married.

Works and poems

Her works in­clude:

• An Idyll of Work, 1875
• “Among Lowell Mill-Girls: A Rem­i­nis­cence,” At­lantic Month­ly (No­vem­ber 1881)
• A New Eng­land Girlhood, 1889

Her Poems included:

This is a haunted world. It hath no breeze

But is the echo of some voice beloved:

Its pines have human tones; its billows wear

The color and the sparkle of dear eyes.

Its flowers are sweet with touch of tender hands

That once clasped ours. All things are beautiful

Because of something lovelier than themselves,

Which breathes within them, and will never die. —

Haunted,—but not with any spectral gloom;

Earth is suffused, inhabited by heaven.

These blossoms, gathered in familiar paths,

With dear companions now passed out of sight,

Shall not be laid upon their graves. They live,

Since love is deathless. Pleasure now nor pride

Is theirs in mortal wise, but hallowing thoughts

Will meet the offering, of so little worth,

Wanting the benison death has made divine.

Oh, her heart’s adrift with one

On an endless voyage gone!

Night and morning

Hannah’s at the window binding shoes.

List of more poems here.

Legacy

Larcom's influence is still felt in her hometown of Beverly. A local literary magazine entitled The Larcom Review is named for her, as is the library at the Beverly High School.

Larcom Mountain, located in the Ossipee Mountains in New Hampshire, is named after her, as she frequented the area during the late 1800s.

At Wheaton College (Massachusetts) in Norton, Massachusetts, the Larcom Dormitory is named after her.

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 can be found 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.

References

• Larcom, Lucy. "Lucy Larcom". Lucy Larcom. Retrieved 5 December 2011. 

Further reading

• Selden, Bernice (1983). The mill girls: Lucy Larcom, Harriet Hanson Robinson, Sarah G. Bagley. Atheneum. ISBN 9780689310058. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lucy Larcom.

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Lucy Larcom

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lucy Larcom

• Works by Lucy Larcom at Project Gutenberg