Delia Bacon - Biography

Biography

Bacon was born in a frontier log-cabin in Tallmadge, Ohio, the youngest daughter of a Congregationalist minister, who in pursuit of a vision had abandoned New Haven for the wilds of Ohio. The venture quickly collapsed, and the family returned to New England, where her father died soon after. The impoverished state of their finances permitted only her elder brother Leonard to receive a tertiary education, at Yale, while her own formal education ended when she was fourteen. She became a teacher in schools in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, and then, until about 1852, became a distinguished professional lecturer, conducting, in various Eastern United States cities, classes for women in history and literature by methods she devised. At 20, in 1831, she published her first book, Tales of the Puritans anonymously, consisting of three long stories on colonial life. In 1832 she beat Edgar Allan Poe for a short-story prize sponsored by the Philadelphia Saturday Courier.

In 1836 she moved to New York, and became an avid theatre-goer. She met the leading Shakespearean actress Ellen Tree soon after, and persuaded her to take the lead role in a play she was writing, partly in blank verse, entitled The Bride of Fort Edward, based on her award-winning story, Love's Martyr, about Jane M'Crea, which she also published anonymously in 1839. The work was reviewed favourably again by Edgar Allan Poe, but proved to be a commercial flop.