American

Eugene Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850, educated in Monson and Williamstown, Mass., at Knox College (Galesburg, Illinois), and at the University of Missouri. His career in journalism saw him write for newspapers in St.

Daniel Decatur Emmett was born in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, on October 29, 1815. After working in newspaper offices, and serving in the army, Emmett played in circus bands. Emmett organized the first black minstrel company, the Virginia Minstrels, in New York in 1843; he played the violin, and his band was a great success.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, and raised by his mother, Paul Dunbar stood out as the only black student in Central High School, the class poet, the editor of the school newspaper, and the president of its literary club, the Philomathean Society.

Born September 10, 1886, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Hilda Doolittle wrote poetry, plays, fiction, and speculative prose, and experimented in film. She was educated at the Moravian Girls' Seminary and the Friends' Central School, where she was a keen classicist and basketball player in her youth, being tall (5 feet, 11 inches).

For more poems, see the Academy of America Poets

For more poems, see the Academy of America Poets

Born on November 1, 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane grew up in Port Jervis and Asbury Park.

Edmund Vance Cooke, popularly known as "the poet laureate of childhood," was born on June 5, 1866, in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada. He began working at 13-14 years old for the White Sewing Machine Co. factory and stayed there for 14 years until he became a self-employed poet and lecturer in 1893. His first book of poems, A Patch of Pansies, came out the next year.

Born February 11, 1802, in Medford, Massachusetts, Lydia Maria Child made her living as a novelist, story-story writer, schoolteacher, editor, writer for children, and controversialist. Her first notorious work, a novel entitled Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times (1824), celebrated interracial marriage.

Born on September 4, 1824, at Mount Healthy, close to Cincinnati, Ohio, Phoebe Cary and her older sister Alice co-published poems in 1849 and then Phoebe went on to bring out three volumes of her own: