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from Melanie Parry, Larousse Dictionary of Women: 3,000 entries from Eve to Oprah Winfrey [New York: Larousse, 1996] p. 338
Jackson, Helen Maria Hunt, née Fiske
Born 1830 Died 1885
American writer known for her novel Ramona and her acquaintance with Emily Dickinson
Helen Fiske was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she went to school with Emily Dickinson. She married an army captain, Edward Hunt, but by 1863 he and her two sons had died and she had turned to writing. In 1875 she married William Jackson.
Ralph Waldo Emerson acclaimed Helen Hunt Jackson as 'America's greatest woman poet,' but this opinion is usually now considered over-valued. In fact it is her two prose works championing the Native American cause which have survive the best; the polemical A Century of Dishonor (1881) and the sentimental but highly popular novel Ramona (1884). Even so, it is the connection with Emily Dickinson which has done most to keep Jackson's name alive. The novel Mercy Philbirck's Choice (1876) is generally considered to contain a fictional portrait of her Amherst schoolfriend.
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last updated February 2002