Coates was born on July 01, 1850 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the daughter of George H. and Ellen Frances (Van Leer) Earle. Her father, a noted lawyer, was the son of Thomas Earle, a philanthropist descended from a Rhode Island family dating from the migration of Ralph Earle in 1634.
Florence was educated at private schools in New England and at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Paris. For over a year she studied music in Brussels with the tenor Dupre, intending to devote herself to music and art.
Florence's interest in poetry began several years after her marriage to Edward Horner Coates. They both took an active interest in local literary affairs, entertained Matthew Arnold at their Germantown home, and were among the founders of the Contemporary Club (1886). In 1911 she wrote an Ode on the Coronation of King George V. For many years she contributed short poems to leading American magazines and to the London Atheneeum.
Her only prose works of interest were two essays on Matthew Arnold, one appearing in the Century Magazine for April 1894, the other in Lippincotfs Magazine for December 1909. The poems appeared in collected editions in 1898 and (two volumes) in 1916, many early poems being omitted from the latter edition. Other volumes of verse were: Mine and Thine (1904); Lyrics of Life (1909) and others.
Some of her best poetry is found in the fine nature poems inspired by her Adirondack summer home, “Elsinore, ” at St. Regis Lake, and among the patriotic poems written during the Great War. Her work was essentially lyrical in quality. She took her literary life rather seriously. “The business of art, ” she held, “is to enlarge and correct the heart and to lift our ideals out of the ugly and the mean through love of the ideal. . The business of art is to appeal to the soul”. With her finished workmanship and careful technique, there was also an element of restraint, characteristic of a lyric talent that develops relatively late in life. Her occasional poems were usually most felicitous but her appeal was to the understanding minority.
In other days Mrs. Coates, with her distinctive social standing, her keenness of mind, her sense of humor, and her stately suavity of manner, would have presided as a grande dame over a literary salon. Her portrait by Violet Oakley, entitled “The Tragic Muse, ” won the gold medal of honor at the San Francisco Exposition. During her later years, Mrs. Coates entertained Mrs. Humphry Ward and other noted visitors at her town home on Spruce St. , Philadelphia.
Florence Earle Coates gained the respect for her achievements in the poetry of many of the leading literary figures of her day. Among those who admired her work were Edmund Clarence Stedman, William Butler Yeats, and Thomas Hardy. In 1915 she was elected poet laureate of Pennsylvania by the state Federation of Women’s Clubs.
(Mine and Thine –Volume II Florence Earle Coates, american...)
(Mine and Thine –Volume I Florence Earle Coates, american ...)
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(Fugitive Verse Florence Earle Coates, american poet (1850...)
Mrs. Coates was president of the Browning Society of Philadelphia from 1895 to 1903, and again in 1907-1908. Eager to promote Anglo-American friendship, she participated in the activities of the Transatlantic Society of America, the Society of Mayflower Descendants, and the Colonial Dames of America.
In 1872 Coates married William Nicholson, who died in 1877. On January 7, 1879, she married Edward Horner Coates, financier and publicist, who from 1890 to 1906 was president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
