Sarah Lewis

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Sarah Anna Lewis was a mid-nineteenth-century American poet who is today better known for her association with Edgar Allan Poe than for her writings. She began her career with frequent periodical publications, then published four volumes of poetry, and later two plays and a novel. She depicted the ancient poet Sappho in both a poem and a play. She was an indefatigable self-booster, at one stage with Poe's help. Despite his adulatory words of praise, for which she or her husband recompensed him with cash, SL was never quite as successful as she hoped and imagined herself to be.
  • BirthName: Sarah Anna Robinson
    Some sources add a third given name, Blanche.

  • Nickname: Sarah Delmonte Lewis
    Garraty, John A., and Mark C. Carnes, editors. American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 1999, 24 vols.
    13: 570
    Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, editors. American Authors, 1600-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of American Literature. H. W. Wilson, 1938.
    466
    Scholars are divided as to whether her birthname was Estelle or Sarah. Edgar Allan Poe 's biographer Hervey Allen plausibly suggests that she dismissed Sarah Anna as a baptismal handicap in the literary race for fame,
    Allen, Hervey. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe. George H. Doran Company, 1927, 2 vols.
    2: 691
    and instead selected Estelle, which according to American Authors, 1600-1900 was a name given her by Poe himself. Both Allen and early scholar Thomas Walsh note that Rufus Griswold was given money by SL 's husband to suppress the name Sarah in his anthology, Female Poets of America—although his edition of 1849 does list her as Sarah Anna Lewis. A church member has entered her birth-date in the International Genealogical Index as Estelle Anna Blanche Robinson.
    Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, editors. American Authors, 1600-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of American Literature. H. W. Wilson, 1938.
    466
    Walsh, Thomas. “Stella and Her Brooklyn Salon”. The Bookman, Vol.
    56
    , No. 5, Jan. 1923, pp. 578-83.
    579
    “FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
    She apparently used Delmonte only in European circles.
    Walsh, Thomas. “Stella and Her Brooklyn Salon”. The Bookman, Vol.
    56
    , No. 5, Jan. 1923, pp. 578-83.
    579

  • Married: Sarah Anna Lewis
  • Pseudonym: Stella
  • Indexed: Estelle Anna Lewis; Estelle Anna Blanche Lewis; Estelle Anna Robinson Lewis; Mrs Sarah Anna Lewis

Milestones

April 1824

Sarah Anna Robinson (later Sarah Lewis) was born near Baltimore, Maryland.
Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, editors. American Authors, 1600-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of American Literature. H. W. Wilson, 1938.
466

1872

The last work issued by the American Sarah Lewis was her single novel, Minna Monte, which she published pseudonymously as Stella.
Two library catalogues attribute their copies of this work (same title, pseudonym, publisher, and date) to a Mrs N. C. Iron , whose identity is a mystery. Nathaniel Colchester Iron was a New York writer (formerly a clerk, at one stage a publisher), whose titles include Stella, the Spy, A Tale of the War of '76, published in 1875 in Beadle's New Dime Novels. But nothing is known of his marriage or his life.
Johannsen, Albert. “The House of Beadle and Adams, and its Dime and Nickel Novels: Nathaniel Colchester Iron”. Northern Illinois University Libraries: Beadle and Adams Dime Novel Digitization Project.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

24 November 1880

The American writer Sarah Lewis died suddenly at 29 Bedford Place in London, where she had lived for fifteen years. After her funeral her body was removed to the United States.
Boase, Frederic. Modern English Biography. F. Cass, 1965, 6 vols.
411
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2771 (1880): 745

Biography

Birth and Family

April 1824

Sarah Anna Robinson (later Sarah Lewis) was born near Baltimore, Maryland.
Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, editors. American Authors, 1600-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of American Literature. H. W. Wilson, 1938.
466

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