Eliza Cook (1818–1889)

Eliza Cook was born in London, England, the youngest of 11 children of a brazier. When she was about nine years old, the family went to live on a small farm in St. Leonard's Forest, near Horsham. Her mother encouraged Eliza's interest in literature, but otherwise she was almost entirely self-educated. She began writing poems as a teenager and published her first poetry collection, Lays of a Wild Harp: A Collection of Metrical Pieces at age 17 in 1835. With its favorable reception, she began to send verses anonymously to various periodicals. After a while, she published exclusively in the radical newspaper the Weekly Dispatch, and was a staple of its pages for 10 years.
Her 1838 poem "The Old Armchair" made her famous both in England and the USA. Along with many other writers, Cook was a supporter of the Chartist Movement and was known as a poet of the working class. Her poems advocated for political and sexual freedom for women and addressed questions of class and social justice. Despite her popularity, however, she was criticized for the ways in which she defied gender conventions in both her writing and her life. Like her near-contemporary George Sand, Cook wore male clothing in public. She had a relationship with American actress Charlotte Cushman, to whom she addressed a number of her poems.

From 1849 to 1854 she wrote, edited, and published Eliza Cook's Journal, a bi-weekly publication aimed at a female audience. After it folded,
Cook went on to publish Jottings from my Journal (1860), which included many essays and sketches.
She also published New Echoes and Other Poems (1864).

Later, ill-health prevented her from writing new works or revising her existing ones.