author
Ethel Allen Murphy
A thoughtful poet whose work blends spiritual reflection, art, and social feeling, Ethel Allen Murphy is best known for her illustrated collection The Angel of Thought and Other Poems. Her writing also reached beyond poetry, from literary scholarship to patriotic educational pageants.
1 Audiobook
The Angel of Thought and Other Poems Impressions from Old Masters
by Ethel Allen Murphy
About the author
Ethel Allen Murphy was an early-20th-century American poet and literary scholar. Her 1909 collection, The Angel of Thought and Other Poems: Impressions from Old Masters, pairs devotional poems with meditations inspired by paintings by artists including Fra Angelico, Botticelli, and Dürer.
Murphy earned a master’s degree from the University of Louisville in 1911 with a thesis on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetic rhythm. She also wrote for periodicals and created Victory of the Gardens, a pageant produced for the United States School Garden Army in 1919, showing the range of her interests in literature, education, art, and public life.