What do you have on Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A.� She was an American unconventional poet and journalist. Thanks to pdmsr for the question.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� When did she live

A.� Born Wisconsin, 5 November, 1850, died Connecticut, 30 October, 1919. The family was decidedly a literary one.

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Q.� How so

A.� Her parents, Marcus and Sarah Pratt Wheeler, were intellectuals who craved reading material. Before Ella's birth, Mrs Wheeler announced that her unborn child would be a daughter, an author, and would travel. Mr Wheeler taught dancing and 'manners'. He was a great violin player.

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Q.� And she had a good education

A.� Indeed. Ella was a bright child. Reading was an important part of daily life, and correct grammar was demanded. At school, she excelled in composition. At the age of 17 she was sent to the female college at the University of Wisconsin. However, she felt an outcast in her home-made clothes when she saw the smart city girls.

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Q.� Oh dear. What happened

A.� She left after a year and returned home. She started to write seriously and her essays were published in the New York Mercury. Soon, her poems were appearing in the Waverly Magazine and Leslie's Weekly.

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Q.� Books

A.� Her first book, a collection of temperance verses, appeared in 1872 as Drops of Water. Shells, a collection of religious poems, followed in 1873 and Maurine, in 1876.

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Q.� They sound a bag of laughs.

A.� Wait for it ... Her next, a collection of love poems, was rejected by a Chicago publisher on grounds that it was immoral. It was quickly taken up by another publisher in 1883, retitled Poems of Passion, and became very successful, selling 60,000 copies in two years.

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Q.� Talking of passion ... did she have an admirer

A.� Plenty, apparently. On 2 May, 1884, she married Robert Wilcox, a silver salesman from Connecticut. Their only child, a boy, died after only a few hours.

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Q.� She immersed her grief in more work

A.� Ella became the centre of a literary clique and kept writing. By the turn of the century she was writing a syndicated advice column for Hearst Newspapers. The editor asked her to go to London to write a poem about Queen Victoria. It was called The Queen's Last Ride, and England remained close to her heart. She was later presented at court.

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Q.� And then

A.� Ella and Robert spent most of their time travelling the world. They returned in 1913. Three years later, Robert contracted pneumonia and died suddenly. Ella never really recovered, and sought solace in spiritualism.

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Q.� Did that do her any good

A.� Apparently not. At her late husband's suggestion (she said), she undertook a lecture and poetry-reading tour of Allied army camps in France in 1918. There, she became seriously ill and returned home where she died of cancer on 31 October, 1919.

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Q.� I don't see many of her books. Is she still popular

A.� Many of her quotations have survived. Try this one:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

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