(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.
(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.
Nora Perry was an American poet, journalist and author of juvenile stories.
Background
She was born in 1831 in Dudley, Massachusetts, United States, the daughter of Harvey and Sarah (Benson) Perry of Dudley, Massachussets. In her childhood the family removed to Providence, where her father was a merchant.
As a child of eight she wrote a hair-raising romance, "The Shipwreck, " which she read to her playmates with great effect. Her book favorites were the Arabian Nights and boys' stories, and, as she grew older, Emerson's essays and the poetry of the Brownings.
Education
she was educated at home and in private schools of Providence.
Career
When only eighteen she began to write for magazines, and her first serial, "Rosalind Newcomb, " ran in Harper's Magazine, 1859-60. She soon went to live in Boston where she became correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the Providence Journal, as well as a contributor of stories and poems to many magazines.
One of her most popular poems, "Tying Her Bonnet Under Her Chin, " was declined by the Atlantic Monthly and was then published in the National Era at Washington. It took the public fancy and was sung and parodied throughout the East. The Atlantic then made her an offer for a poem equally good, and she wrote "After the Ball, " her best known piece, first published in the Atlantic for July 1859 and sometimes printed under the title "Maud and Madge. " Although it was excessively sentimental and morbid, Longfellow is said to have given it moderate praise as "a very cleverly versified poem that - a very artistic poem. "
Nora Perry later wrote stories for girls almost exclusively. Her volumes include: After the Ball, and Other Poems (1875); Her Lover's Friend, and Other Poems (1880); The Tragedy of the Unexpected, and Other Stories (1880); A Book of Love Stories (1881) and others.
For some time before her death she made her home in a hotel at Lexington, Massachussets. While on a short visit to her old home at Dudley she suffered a stroke of apoplexy and died.