author
Sophie Jewett
1861–1909
A gifted lyric poet, translator, and teacher, she brought musical language and quiet emotional depth to everything she wrote. Her work moves between intimate feeling, literary craft, and a lifelong love of poetry in many forms.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Moravia, New York, in 1861, she grew up in Buffalo after her father's early death and began publishing poems while still young. She often wrote under the pen name Ellen Burroughs, and readers came to know her for graceful, carefully shaped lyric poems.
Her life in literature was closely tied to teaching. She joined the English faculty at Wellesley College in 1889 and later became an associate professor, helping guide students while continuing her own writing and translation work. Travel in Europe also widened her literary interests and informed parts of her writing.
Along with her original poetry, she translated French verse and built a reputation for refinement, feeling, and technical skill. She died in 1909, but her poems and posthumous collections kept her voice alive for later readers.