Larcom, Lucy

Lucy (1826-1893), an American writer. She was born at Beverly, Massachusetts, and died at Boston, April 17, 1893. When a girl she worked in a cotton mill at Lowell, Massachusetts. Her first writing was in the form of contributions to the Lowell Offering, a magazine conducted by the operatives in the mills. She attracted Whittier's attention. She studied, taught, and wrote. She became the editor of Our Young Folks, a Boston magazine since absorbed by St. Nicholas. She wrote many short stories and published several slender volumes of verse, bearing Childhood Songs, Wild Roses of Cape Ann, and other titles. She wrote her own life in A New England Girlhood. Her best known poem is perhaps Hannah at the Window Binding Shoes, long a favorite with the Hutchinson family of singers. Nothing has been written that more perfectly pictures the pathos of life in a fishing village: