Writers Alice and Phoebe Cary
The Cary Sisters, Poets and Novelists: "One Sweetly Solemn Thought"
Cincinnati, Ohio, was the birthplace of two sisters Alice Cary (1820-1871) and Phoebe Cary (1824-1871), who became famous for their poems and other writings. The sisters had little formal education and were largely self taught, after their mother initially instructed them in the basics. After their mother died their father remarried, in 1837, a woman who was not the least interested in the girls or their literary aspirations.
Poems
Alice's first poem was published when she was eighteen, in the Sentinel, a Cincinnati-based Universalist newspaper, and shortly afterward Phoebe published her first poem in a Boston newspaper. Alice continued to write poems and prose pieces for the next ten years and many were published but without any monetary gain for her. However, such writers as Edgar Allen Poe, Horace Greeley and John Greenleaf Whittier read her works and encouraged and supported her in her efforts to become established as an author.
Through the timely intervention of the journalist, editor and critic Rufus Griswold, the sisters put together their first book "Poems of Alice and Phoebe Carey" [sic] in 1850. A move to New York City ensued and they contributed regularly to the Atlantic Monthly , Harper's Magazine, and other leading periodicals of the day.
The older sister, Alice, was a more prolific writer than Phoebe and thus enjoyed a wider reputation in her lifetime. However, Phoebe's work would later be critically acclaimed for the depth of feeling shown in her writings.The two sisters held a literary salon in New York City for several years to which many of the literary stars in New York came regularly.
Women's Rights Movement
Alice and Phoebe were members and were strongly supported by the Women's Rights Movement. Phoebe was secretary for a time of Susan B. Anthony's newspaper Revolution. In 1868 Alice was approached by the group to become the first president of Sorosis, a women's club founded in New York by journalist Jane Cunningham Croly. She served only a short term as she was becoming increasingly ill.
During these years Phoebe was the homemaker and caregiver for Alice, who passed away in New York City on February 12, 1871 after a long illness. Phoebe, exhausted by the years of nursing Alice, died of malaria on July 31 of the same year, in Newport, Rhode Island.
A short list of Phoebe's works follows:
Poems and Parodies, 1854
Poems of Faith, Hope and Love, 1868
The religious verse, "Nearer Home" became a famous hymn better known by its first line, "One Sweetly Solemn Thought.".
Alice published: Clavernook Papers, 1852;1853
A novel, Hagar, A Story of Today, 1852
Lyra and Other Poems, 1852
And many hymns, novels and verses.
Source: Famous American Women, ed. Robert McHenry, Dover, 1980
