WILCOX, Ella Wheeler

Born 5 November 1850, Johnstown Center, Wisconsin; died 30 October 1919, Short Beach, Connecticut

Wrote under: Ella Wheeler

Daughter of Marcus H. and Sarah Pratt Wheeler; married Robert M. Wilcox, 1884

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was the youngest of four children born to a music teacher turned farmer and a mother who had strong literary ambitions. She claimed that her mother's extensive reading of Shakespeare, Scott, and Byron was a prenatal influence that shaped her entire career. Her mother helped her to find time to read and write rather than work on the bleak Wisconsin farm.

Wilcox was influenced early by the romantic melodramas of Ouida, Mary J. Holmes, May Agnes Fleming, and Mrs. Southworth. At the age of ten, she wrote a "novel" in 10 chapters, printing it in her childish hand on scraps of paper and binding it in paper torn from the kitchen wall. The New York Mercury published an essay when she was fifteen. In 1867 she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, where, however, she remained only a short time. She begged her family to be allowed to remain at home and write.

By the time she was eighteen, she was earning a substantial salary, which aided her impoverished family. People from Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago began to seek out the little country girl with the "inspired pen," and she in turn was delighted to visit their city homes. By 1880 the "Milwaukee School of Poetry" was at its height with Wilcox as its shining light; the poets were all well known throughout the West, and some had even gained recognition in the East.

Maurine (1876), a narrative poem, introduces two types of women Wilcox often wrote about: Helen, a weak and passive person who bears a daughter and soon dies, and Maurine, an aggressive and highly intelligent artist who eventually marries an American poet-intellectual. Maurine travels to Europe, where her paintings are favorably received. Helen and Maurine reappear in more complex form as Mabel and Ruth, two of the characters in Three Women (1897).

When Wilcox attempted to publish Poems of Passion (1883), a collection of poems that had appeared previously in various periodicals, the book was rejected because of the "immorality" of several poems, and its author became the subject of unpleasant notoriety. When a Chicago publisher brought out the book, however, it was an immediate success, and Wilcox's reputation was made. In this work, she brought into her love poetry the element of sin. By 1888 she was a leader in what was called the Erotic School, a group of writers who rebelled against the stricter rules of conventionality. By 1900 a whole feminine school of rather daring verse on the subject of the emotions followed Wilcox's lead.

The symbolism of sexual passion is depicted throughout her poems as a tiger who is "a splendid creature," as in "Three and One" (Poems of Pleasure, 1888); sex for Wilcox is "all the tiger in my blood." In "At Eleusis," motherhood is praised and welcomed, a common theme of her poetry.

Wilcox wrote editorials and essays for the New York Journal and the Chicago American as well as contributing to Cosmopolitan and other magazines. In 1901 she was commissioned by the New York American to write a poem on the death of Queen Victoria and was sent to London, where she was presented at the court of St. James. During World War I, she toured the army camps in France, reciting her poems and counseling young soldiers on their problems.

Throughout her life, Wilcox enjoyed great popularity, and she took her work most seriously. In defending her poetry against critics, she maintained that "heart, not art," is most important in poetry and pointed out that her poems comforted millions of weary and unhappy people.

Other Works:

Drops of Water (1872). Shells (1873). The Birth of the Opal (1886). Mal Moulee: A Novel (1886). Perdita, and Other Stories (1886). The Adventures of Miss Volney (1888). A Double Life (1891). How Salvatore Won (1891). The Beautiful Land of Nod (1892). An Erring Woman's Love (1892). A Budget of Christmas Tales (1895). An Ambitious Man (1896). Custer and Other Poems (1896). Men, Women, and Emotions (1896). Poems of Power (1901). The Heart of the New Thought (1902). Kingdom of Love (1902). Sweet Danger (1902). Around the Year (1904). Poems of Love (1905). A Woman of the World (1905). Mizpah (1906). New Thought Pastels (1906). Poems of Sentiment (1906). New Thought Common Sense and What Life Means to Me (1908). Song of Liberty (1908). Poems of Progress (1909). Sailing Sunny Seas (1909). The New Hawaiian Girl (1910). Yesterdays (1910). The Englishman, and Other Poems (1912). Gems (1912). Picked Poems (1912). The Art of Being Alive (1914). Cameos (1914). Lest We Forget (1914). Poems of Problems (1914). World Voices (1916). The Worlds and I (1918). Poems (1918). Sonnets of Sorrow and Triumph (1918). Collected Poems (1924).

Bibliography:

Ballou, J., Period Piece: Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Her Time (1940). Brown, N., Critical Confessions (1899). Town, C. H., Adventures in Editing (1926). Watts, E. S., The Poetry of American Women, 1632-1945 (1977). Wheeler, M. P., Evolution of Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Other Wheelers (1921).

Reference works:

AA. NAW (1971). Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995).

Other references:

American Mercury (Aug. 1934). Bookman (Jan. 1920). Cosmopolitan (Nov. 1888). Harper's (Mar. 1952). Literary Digest (22 Nov. 1919). London Times (31 Oct. 1919). NYT (31 Oct. 1919). Poetry and Drama (Mar. 1913).

—ANNE R. GROBEN