Ella Stevens Harris

Ella Stevens Harris is known for Brown Leaves, and Other Verses, a poetry collection published in 1912 by Oswald Press in New York. In the book's prefatory note, she explains that some of the poems had appeared over many years in newspapers and periodicals before being gathered into this volume at the request of friends.

The surviving record for Harris is quite limited, which gives her work an especially archival feel today. Library and public-domain sources confirm Brown Leaves, and Other Verses as her main known book, and the poems themselves center on nature, love, memory, and the passing of time.

Because so little biographical information is readily documented, Harris is remembered chiefly through her writing rather than a detailed life story. That makes her collection a small but appealing discovery for readers and listeners interested in overlooked poets from the early 1900s.