author
Nancy Luce
1814–1890
Best known as Martha’s Vineyard’s beloved “chicken lady,” she turned a hard, isolated life into poems, handmade keepsakes, and a local legend. Her work blends folk art, humor, and deep affection for the hens she treated almost like family.
1 Audiobook
A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce
by Nancy Luce
About the author
Born in West Tisbury, Massachusetts, in 1814, Nancy Luce spent her whole life on Martha’s Vineyard. She is remembered as a poet and folk artist, and became a well-known local figure during the 19th century for the small books of verse and mementos she sold to visitors.
Luce lived with physical pain and increasing hardship, and much of her writing grew out of that lonely, difficult life. She wrote especially tenderly about her chickens, giving them names and mourning them in verse when they died. That unusual mix of sorrow, affection, and plainspoken wit helped make her one of the Vineyard’s most memorable historical voices.
Today, she is often celebrated not just as a curiosity of local history, but as a distinctive self-made artist whose work offers a rare glimpse of everyday island life in the 1800s. Her story has been preserved through museum collections and her continuing reputation on Martha’s Vineyard.