Editing Alice Cary

{{short description|American writer}}
{{for|the American educator, librarian, and civil rights activist|Alice Dugged Cary}}
{{redirect|Alice Carey|the American preservation architect|Alice Ross Carey}}
{{lead too short|date=July 2020}}
[[Image:Alice cary portrait in cary cottage.jpg|thumb|1850 portrait of Alice Cary in New York City which hangs in her childhood home in [[North College Hill, Ohio]]]]
'''Alice Cary''' (April 26, 1820{{snd}}February 12, 1871) was an American [[poet]], and the older sister of fellow poet [[Phoebe Cary]] (1824–1871).

==Biography==
[[Image:Cary cottage 3380.jpg|thumb|Cary Cottage, childhood home of Alice and [[Phoebe Cary]] near Cincinnati, Ohio]]
Alice Cary was born on April 26, 1820, in [[Mount Healthy, Ohio]], off the Miami River near [[Cincinnati, Ohio|Cincinnati]].<ref>Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. ''The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 297. {{ISBN|0-19-503186-5}}</ref> Her parents lived on a farm bought by Robert Cary in 1813 in what is now [[North College Hill, Ohio]]. He called the {{convert|27|acre|m2}} [[Clovernook]] Farm. The farm was {{convert|10|mi|km}} north of Cincinnati, a good distance from schools, and the father could not afford to give their large family of nine children a very good education. But Alice and her sister [[Phoebe Cary|Phoebe]] were fond of reading and studied all they could.

While the sisters were raised in a [[Universalist]] household and held political and religious views that were liberal and reformist, they often attended Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist services and were friendly with ministers of all these denominations and others.  According to Phoebe,

{{quote|text=Though singularly liberal and unsectarian in her views, [Alice] always preserved a strong attachment to the church of her parents, and, in the main, accepted its doctrines. Caring little for creeds or minor points, she most firmly believed in human brotherhood as taught by Jesus; and in a God whose loving kindness is so deep and so unchangeable that there can never come a time even the vilest sinner, in all the ages of eternity, when if he arises and go to Him, his Father will not see him afar off, and have compassion upon him.<ref>{{Cite web |author=June Edwards |url=http://uudb.org/articles/carysisters.html |title=The Cary Sisters |publisher=Unitarian & Universalist Dictionary of Biography |website=uudb.org |accessdate=May 25, 2016 |date=March 20, 2003 |archive-date=June 11, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160611105241/http://uudb.org/articles/carysisters.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>}}

When Alice was 17 and Phoebe 13, they began to write verses, which were printed in newspapers. Their mother had died in 1835, and two years afterward their father married again. Their stepmother was wholly unsympathetic regarding the literary aspirations of Alice and Phoebe.  For their part, while the sisters were ready and while willing to aid to the full extent of their strength in household labor, they persisted in a determination to study and write when the day's work was done. Sometimes they were refused the use of candles to the extent of their wishes, and the device of a saucer of lard with a bit of rag for a wick was their only light after the rest of the family had retired.<ref name="appletons">{{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Cary, Alice|year=1900}}</ref>

Alice's first major poem, "The Child of Sorrow", was published in 1838 and was praised by influential critics including [[Edgar Allan Poe]], [[Rufus Wilmot Griswold]], and [[Horace Greeley]].<ref>Reynolds, David S. ''Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988. {{ISBN|0-674-06565-4}}. p. 398</ref> Alice and her sister were included in the influential anthology ''The Female Poets of America'' prepared by Rufus Griswold.<ref>Bayless, Joy. ''Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor''. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943. p. 213</ref> Griswold encouraged publishers to put forth a collection of the sisters' poetry, even asking [[John Greenleaf Whittier]] to provide a preface. Whittier refused, believing their poetry did not need his endorsement, and also noting a general dislike for prefaces as a method to "pass off by aid of a known name, what otherwise would not pass current".<ref>Woodwell, Roland H. ''John Greenleaf Whittier: A Biography''. Haverhill, Massachusetts: Trustees of the John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead, 1985: 232</ref> In 1849, a Philadelphia publisher accepted the book, ''Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary'', and Griswold wrote the preface, left unsigned. By the spring of 1850, Alice and Griswold were often corresponding through letters which were often flirtatious. This correspondence ended by the summer of that year.<ref>Bayless, Joy. ''Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor''. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943. p. 214–215</ref>

The anthology made Alice and Phoebe well known, and in 1850 they moved to [[New York City]], where they devoted themselves to writing and garnered much fame. There, they also hosted receptions on Sunday evenings that drew notable figures including [[P. T. Barnum]], [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]], John Greenleaf Whittier,<ref name=Kane297>Kane, Paul. ''Poetry of the American Renaissance''. New York: George Braziller, 1995: 297. {{ISBN|0-8076-1398-3}}</ref> [[Horace Greeley]], [[Bayard Taylor]] and his wife, Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard, [[Robert Dale Owen]], Oliver Johnson, [[Mary Mapes Dodge]], Mrs. Croly, Mrs. Victor, Edwin H. Chapin, Henry M. Field, Charles F. Deems, [[Samuel Bowles (journalist)|Samuel Bowles]], [[Thomas B. Aldrich]], Anna E. Dickinson, George Ripley, [[Octavia Walton Le Vert|Madame Le Vert]], Henry Wilson, Justin McCarthy; in short, all the noted contemporary names in the different departments of literature and art might fairly be added to the list.<ref name="appletons"/>

Alice wrote for the ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'', ''Harper's'', ''[[Putnam's Magazine]]'', the ''New York Ledger'', the ''Independent'', and other literary periodicals. Her articles, whether prose or poetry, were gathered subsequently into volumes which were received well in the [[United States]] and abroad. She also wrote novels and poems which did not make their first appearance in periodicals.<ref name="appletons"/>  Among her prose works were ''The Clovernook Children'' and ''Snow Berries, a Book for Young Folks''.

In 1868, Horace Greeley wrote a brief joint biography of Alice and Phebe (as he spelled her name).<ref>Greeley, Horace, "Alice and [[Phoebe Cary|Phebe Cary]]", in ''Eminent Women of the Age; Being Narratives of the Lives and Deeds of the Most Prominent Women of the Present Generation'', Hartford, CT: S. M. Betts & Company (1868), pp. 164-172</ref>

[[File:Grave of Cary sisters.JPG|thumb|right|Grave of the Cary sisters]] 
Alice died of [[tuberculosis]] in 1871<ref name=Kane297/> in New York at age 50. The pallbearers at her funeral included P. T. Barnum and Horace Greeley.  Alice Cary is buried alongside her sister Phoebe in [[Green-Wood Cemetery]], [[Brooklyn, New York]].

The Cary Home stands today on the east side of Hamilton Avenue ([[US 127]]), on the campus of the Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in North College Hill.

==Remembrance==
The first volume of ''[[History of Woman Suffrage]]'', published in 1881, states, “THESE VOLUMES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO THE Memory of [[Mary Wollstonecraft]], [[Frances Wright]], [[Lucretia Mott]], [[Harriet Martineau]], [[Lydia Maria Child]], [[Margaret Fuller]], [[Sarah Moore Grimké|Sarah]] and [[Angelina Grimké]], [[Josephine Sophia White Griffing|Josephine S. Griffing]], [[Martha Coffin Wright|Martha C. Wright]], [[Harriot Kezia Hunt|Harriot K. Hunt]], M.D., [[Mariana W. Johnson]], Alice and [[Phoebe Cary|Phebe Carey]], [[Ann Preston]], M.D., [[Lydia Mott (activist)|Lydia Mott]], [[Eliza Farnham|Eliza W. Farnham]], [[Lydia Folger Fowler|Lydia F. Fowler]], M.D., [[Paulina Wright Davis]], Whose Earnest Lives and Fearless Words, in Demanding Political Rights for Women, have been, in the Preparation of these Pages, a Constant Inspiration TO The Editors”.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/28020/pg28020-images.html|title=History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I|website=[[Project Gutenberg]]}}</ref>

== Works ==
*''Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary''  (1849)
*''A Memorial of Alice and Phoebe Cary With Some of Their Later Poems'', compiled and edited by Mary Clemmer Ames (1873)
*''The Last Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary'', compiled and edited by Mary Clemmer Ames (1873)
*''Ballads for Little Folk'' by Alice and Phoebe Cary, compiled and edited by Mary Clemmer Ames (1873)

Note: In early volumes, "Cary" was spelled "Carey" in and on Phoebe and Alice Cary's books, and later editions and volumes changed the spelling to "Cary".

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Library resources box|by=yes|onlinebooks=yes|viaf=103691260}}
*{{wikisource author-inline}}
*{{wikiquote-inline}}
*{{commons category-inline}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Alice Cary}}
* {{Librivox author |id=8214}}
* [http://college.hmco.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/early_nineteenth/cary_al.html Alice Cary (1820–1871)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080621150842/http://college.hmco.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/early_nineteenth/cary_al.html |date=2008-06-21 }}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929084135/http://www.cincinnatimemory.org/gsdl/collect/greaterc/archives/HASH01c4/f0c1caab.dir/ocp001525pccpc.jpg Cary Cottage]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929083825/http://www.cincinnatimemory.org/gsdl/collect/greaterc/archives/HASH01e9/0921706e.dir/ocp001530pccnb.jpg Cary Oak]
* [http://theotherpages.org/poems/poem-cd.html#acary Index entry at Poets' Corner for Alice Cary]
* [http://www.green-wood.com/burial_results/index.php Green-Wood Cemetery Burial Search]
* [https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Cary,_Alice Works with text by Alice Cary on IMSLP]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cary, Alice}}
[[Category:1820 births]]
[[Category:1871 deaths]]
[[Category:Writers from Cincinnati]]
[[Category:19th-century deaths from tuberculosis]]
[[Category:Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery]]
[[Category:American women poets]]
[[Category:19th-century American poets]]
[[Category:19th-century American women writers]]
[[Category:People from Mount Healthy, Ohio]]
[[Category:People from North College Hill, Ohio]]
[[Category:Tuberculosis deaths in New York (state)]]