Born in 1824 in Beverly, Massachusetts, Lucy Larcom began writing poems and short stories at age seven. Her father was a sea captain, but died in 1832. Mrs. Larcom moved to Lowell in 1835 with four of her daughters, including Lucy, who was then nine years old. Mrs. Larcom managed a boarding house for the Lawrence Manufacturing Corporation while the girls worked in the mill.

Lucy and her sisters attended the First Congregational Church and joined the church-sponsored “Improvement Circle,” which developed a literary magazine called The Operative’s Magazine. Lucy and her sister Emeline were frequent contributors, writing articles, editorials, and poetry for that magazine and later for the Lowell Offering.

Lucy’s articles attracted the attention of poet, editor and abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier, who was then conducting a Free-Soil paper in Lowell, and who encouraged her literary efforts. Later, Whittier would become Larcom’s literary mentor, beginning a life-long friendship and literary collaboration.

In 1846 Lucy left New England, moving with Emeline and her husband to the “Looking-Glass Prairie” area of Illinois east of St. Louis, MO.

Lucy taught in district schools and attended Monticello Female Seminary, dubbed “the ornament of the West,” in Godfrey, IL, as a part-time student and assistant teacher. She graduated in 1852, at a period when the Seminary, under the leadership of Miss Philena Fobes, was at the height of its academic and cultural achievement.

Returning to Massachusetts after graduation, Larcom entered Boston’s literary world, publishing her first book in 1853 and publishing poems and articles in numerous national magazines. Larcom was an ardent abolitionist and submitted a poem to an 1855 contest organized by the New England Emigrant Aid Company for the best poem written to encourage anti-slavery emigrants to settle Kansas.  Her entry, “Call to Kansas,” won the prize, a fifty-dollar gold piece, and was printed in many newspapers and on handkerchiefs to be handed out at Free-Soil rallies.

Needing a steady income, Lucy took a position at Wheaton Female Seminary, where she taught English literature, composition and other subjects from 1854 to 1863 and from 1865 to 1867, followed by many years as a visiting lecturer.

Larcom became assistant editor of the Boston magazine, Our Young Folks, in 1865. Becoming editor-in-chief only a year later, Lucy conducted the magazine until 1874, and also contributed regularly to St. Nicholas Magazine. Her works were published in many other leading periodicals of the time, such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and New England Magazine.

Larcom’s independent lifestyle was hard-won. She was never wealthy and, although she would never admit to having a career, her ability to support herself through writing was unusual for an unmarried woman of her era.  Throughout her life she struggled with loneliness and self-doubt, overcoming them through work and faith.

Beginning in 1891, Larcom suffered increasingly frequent bouts of illness. In November 1892, she sorted her papers, destroying everything that seemed too private, including her journals from the 1860s and 1870s with their references to an early romance with her brother-in-law. Murmuring the word, “freedom,” Lucy died on 17 April 1893.

© Wheaton College

Rev. Rita Powell is the chaplain for the Harvard Episcopal Community. Rita earned her BA from Barnard College of Columbia University, where she served as captain of the varsity softball team, and her M.Div from Yale Divinity School, where she was awarded the William Muehl Preaching Prize. She spent a long stretch living and working with the monastic community in Taizé, France, and also served as the Youth Missioner in the Diocese of South Dakota for several years before coming to Boston as the Associate Rector for Liturgy and Music at Trinity Church in Copley Square. She lives in Belmont with her husband and two children.