Alice Cary: The Poet Who Rests in Green-Wood
- Marina Aris
- Apr 29
- 3 min read
A note from our founder
Our seventeenth tribute goes to a poet who wrote her way out of a childhood with almost nothing, and who spent her most productive years splitting her time between a Manhattan townhouse and a quiet Brooklyn retreat. Alice Cary built a literary salon that shaped New York's intellectual life for two decades — and today she rests, fittingly, in one of Brooklyn's most storied cemeteries.
A Girlhood by Lard-Light
Alice Cary was born near Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 26, 1820, and grew up on a farm alongside her sister, Phoebe Cary. The household had very little money and even less formal schooling, but the sisters shared a fierce passion for literature. They studied late into the night by a crude saucer of lard fitted with a rag wick, since their stepmother forbade them from burning candles on what she considered frivolous reading.
A Bold Move to New York
In 1849, the sisters published their first collaborative volume, Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary, which drew glowing praise from literary giants like Edgar Allan Poe and John Greenleaf Whittier. Bolstered by that success, Alice made a genuinely radical choice for a single woman of her era: in 1850, she moved to New York City to build a career as an independent, professional writer.
A Salon in Two Boroughs
Phoebe joined her soon after, and the sisters bought a house on East Twentieth Street in Manhattan along with a second property out in Brooklyn, where they frequently retreated to write. Alice became the household's primary breadwinner, and for more than twenty years she hosted a legendary Sunday evening literary salon that became a true epicenter of the New York intellectual scene, drawing figures like Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, and P.T. Barnum. She was also a committed advocate for women's rights, serving as the first president of Sorosis, America's first professional club for women writers and artists.
Laid to Rest Together
Alice battled chronic, painful illness for much of her adult life and died of tuberculosis in 1871. In a striking testament to their lifelong bond, a grief-stricken Phoebe died just five months later. The sisters are buried side by side in Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood Cemetery, where they remain to this day.
Major Books & Works
Poetry Collections
Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary (1849) — The historic collaborative debut that launched the sisters into national fame, blending romantic nature imagery with themes of faith and mortality.
Lyra and Other Poems (1852) — Alice's first major solo collection, highly praised for its rhythmic grace and deeply moving elegiac tone.
Ballads, Lyrics, and Hymns (1866) — A beautifully bound, career-defining collection that became a staple in 19th-century American households, featuring her popular domestic and spiritual verses.
Fiction & Regional Sketches
Clovernook; or, Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West (1852) — Her highly successful prose work, offering realistic, gritty, and deeply empathetic sketches of rural Ohio life that pushed back against the overly romanticized frontier stories of the time.
Hagar: A Story of To-day (1852) — A progressive, socially conscious novel tackling the difficult double standards faced by women in 19th-century society.
The Bishop's Son (1867) — Her final major novel, detailing the shifting dynamics of an American family caught up in the societal changes leading toward the Civil War.
READ CARY
Start with Clovernook for her clear-eyed, unromantic take on rural life, or Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary if you want to begin where her career did, alongside her sister. Either way, it's worth a quiet visit to Green-Wood Cemetery, where the two of them still rest exactly as they lived: together. Get the book.
As an Amazon Associate, Brooklyn Writers Press may earn from qualifying purchases made through links on this site. This comes at no additional cost to you and helps support our work honoring writers like Alice Cary.
Comments