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.

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.
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. 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.
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.
466