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Helen Maria Jackson Biography |
Helen Maria Jackson (October 18, 1831 – August 12, 1885) was an American poet and novelist, who wrote under the intials of "H. H." (Helen Hunt).
She was born Helen Maria Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of Nathan Welby Fiske (1798-1847), who was a professor in Amherst College. In October 1852 she married Lieutenant Edward Bissell Hunt (1822-1863), of the U.S. corps of engineers. In 1870 she published a little volume of meditative Verses, which was praised by Emerson in the preface to his Parnassus (1874). After twelve years of widowhood, in 1875 she married William S. Jackson, a banker, of Colorado Springs. She became a prolific writer of prose and verse, including juvenile tales, books of travel, household hints and novels. A Century of Dishonor (1881) was an arraignment of the treatment of the Indians by the United States. In 1883 she acted as special commissioner, with Abbot Kinney, to investigate the condition and needs of the Mission Indians in California. Her best-known work, the novel Ramona (1884), based on the history of the American Indians of California, is a defense of the Indian character. Neither the report nor the novel managed to awaken the conscience of the nation regarding the Indians. This failure, combined with increasingly severe health problems, brought on a profound depression, of which she died in San Francisco in 1885.
In addition to her publications referred to above, Mercy Philbrick's Choice (1876), Hetty's Strange History (1877), Zeph (1886), and Sonnets and Lyrics (1886) may be mentioned. |
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