(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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Amelia Ball Coppuck Welby was a 19th-century American poet.
Background
Amelia Ball Coppuck Welby was born in Saint Michaels, Md. , the daughter of William and Mary (Shield) Coppuck. Her father served in the War of 1812. Soon after her birth her father, a contracting mason engaged in the building of lighthouses for the federal government, removed with his family to Baltimore. She spent her childhood in this city.
Education
She received in Baltimore such formal education as she had.
Career
When she was about fourteen the family removed to Kentucky, and Louisville became her home for the remainder of her brief life. She early displayed a facility for writing verse, and by 1837 her poems, signed "Amelia, " began to appear in George D. Prentice's Louisville Daily Journal. Prentice gave her considerable publicity, praising her "artless melodies" and her personal charm. Her fluent verses, pleasantly touched with melancholy, suited the popular taste, and editors of other papers promptly copied her work, giving it wide circulation. Their home soon became a pleasant literary center, where visitors of distinction were to be met. During the 1840's her popularity grew. A collected edition of the Poems by "Amelia" was published in 1845, bound in crimson and gold, and embellished with a romantic frontispiece illustrating "The Rainbow, " one of her most admired poems. Edition after edition followed, until by 1855 fourteen had appeared. Selections from her work were printed in the anthologies made during the decade by Caroline May, T. B. Read, and R. W. Griswold. An engraving of her portrait, painted by Read, was included in his Female Poets of America (1848). Edgar Allan Poe (in "Literati") gave her a high place among the poetical ladies to whom he offered gallant if uncritical praise, especially commending her poem "The Bereaved" for its versification and its admirable unity of effect. Echoes of Drake, Willis, Moore, and Mrs. Hemans filled her poems. Byron she admired extravagantly and to him she addressed some lines entitled "I know Thee Not. " Her range of subjects was narrow, but she pleased the general reader by the smoothness and simplicity of her verse, her appeal to the heart, and her images from nature. She died two months after the birth of her only child. She is buried in the Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, Ky.