E. F. (Elizabeth Fries) Ellet

Born in New York in 1818, Elizabeth Fries Ellet became a prolific American author, poet, and historian. She published from a young age and built a career in several genres, but she is most often remembered for serious historical writing at a time when few women were recognized in that field.

Her best-known work is The Women of the American Revolution, a multivolume history that gathered and preserved accounts of women’s lives and contributions during the war. That project helped make her an early and important chronicler of women’s history in the United States.

Ellet also wrote literary criticism, biographies, domestic advice, and fiction, showing a range that was unusual even in a busy literary era. She died in 1877, and her reputation endures largely because she helped widen the story of American history to include voices that had too often been left out.