Helen Gray Cone (1859–1934)

Helen Gray Cone (March 8, 1859 – January 31, 1934) was a poet and professor of English literature. She spent her entire career at Hunter College, originally known as Normal College of New York, in New York City.

In addition to poetry and fiction, she wrote literary criticism (her 1890 history of American literature was republished in a 2000 anthology, co-edited Pen-Portraits of Literary Women with Jeanette L. Gilder (New York: Cassell, 1887) and provided notes for Houghton Mifflin's Riverside editions of Shakespeare's ;Macbeth (1897), Hamlet (1897), Merchant of Venice (1900), and Twelfth Night (1901). A volume of her selected poems was published as Harvest Home (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1930). She was awarded honorary degrees by New York University in 1908 and Hunter in 1920.

Cone was frequently called upon to read occasional poems at college functions, from her student days into her retirement. She wrote the college's alma mater.

She retired in 1926. In 1927 a fellowship was created in Cone's honor, through donations from students, faculty, and alumni. As of 2020, the Helen Gray Cone Fellowship is still awarded. [from wikipedia]