Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) was an American poet, one of the most popular of her time. Her poem Solitude, with its opening lines on laughter and tears, has become proverbial, and her daily newspaper verses were read by millions.
Wisconsin
Ella Wheeler was born on 5 November 1850 on a farm near Johnstown, Wisconsin, the youngest of four children. Her family was poor, and she began publishing poems in magazines as a teenager to help them.
She briefly attended the University of Wisconsin and returned home to write; by the 1870s she was known across the Midwest.
Poems of Passion
In 1883 a Chicago publisher refused her collection Poems of Passion as immoral. The scandal was reported in newspapers, and when another publisher brought it out, it sold tens of thousands of copies within two years.
In 1884 she married Robert Wilcox, a businessman, and they settled in Connecticut, at Short Beach, where they welcomed writers and artists.
Fame and the war
She wrote a daily poem for newspapers syndicated by William Randolph Hearst, and published dozens of books of verse and prose. Critics often dismissed her work as sentimental, but readers loved it.
After her husband's death in 1916 she became interested in spiritualism. During the First World War she travelled to France to read poems to the troops, fell ill and died at Short Beach on 30 October 1919.
Anecdotes
Solitude in a newspaper
Solitude was first published in the New York Sun on 25 February 1883. A lawyer, John A. Joyce, later claimed to have written it, but Wilcox proved her authorship.
Rejected for immorality
The refusal of Poems of Passion by a Chicago publisher in 1883 made it famous; its new publisher printed the news of the scandal to advertise the book.
Frequently asked questions
What is Ella Wheeler Wilcox's most famous poem?
Solitude, first published in 1883.
Why was Poems of Passion controversial?
A publisher found its love poems immoral and refused it; the scandal made it a best-seller.
Where did she live?
In Wisconsin, then in Connecticut, at Short Beach, from her marriage in 1884.