Helen Hunt Jackson

Born Helen Maria Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830, she grew up in a cultured New England world and was a childhood friend of Emily Dickinson. She later became known as Helen Hunt Jackson, publishing poetry, sketches, travel writing, and fiction under her own name and the initials H.H.

Her career widened after personal loss, and she gained a broad readership through her poems and prose. She is especially associated with A Century of Dishonor (1881), a forceful critique of U.S. policy toward Native Americans, and Ramona (1884), the novel that brought that concern to an even larger audience.

Jackson died in San Francisco in 1885, but her reputation has lasted in two connected ways: as a gifted writer with a clear, readable style, and as an advocate who tried to use literature to stir public conscience.