Women of the Week

Authors Helen Maria Fiske Jackson and Emma Elizabeth Brown are this week's Women of the Week   

• To learn about them by viewing their items, please click on their images.  

• To read their biographical sketches in A Woman of the Century, please click on the highlighted page numbers to the left of their images.

Helen Maria Fiske Jackson, better known as Helen Hunt Jackson, or "H. H.", was an extremely popular writer.  She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on October 18, 1831.

Jackson was a contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, Galaxy, Hearth and Home, The Independent, Nation, and Scribner’s Monthly. 

During the 1870s, Helen began publishing juvenile fiction with Roberts Brothers. Mercy Philbrick’s Choice, a fictional work published by in 1876, was noticed in numerous periodicals. She continued to publish with Roberts Brothers as more and more readers knew of “H. H.” 

Helen capitalized on her known name to support the Native American cause. However, for her A Century of Dishonor (1881), she chose Harper Brothers. When "H. H." published Ramona, her fictional work about Native Americans in 1884, she published it through Roberts Brothers. At least eleven periodicals reviewed this popular work.

She passed away on August 12, 1885.

Author Emma Elizabeth Brown was born on October 18, 1847.  Emma's literary career began in her native town, Concord, New Hampshire, when she submitted a poem to the Concord Monitor. 

Once she moved to Boston, Emma wrote a book of poems and contributed to several periodicals.  Often writing as "E. E. Brown," she penned several biographical sketches, poems, and short stories for periodicals such as Aldine, Atlantic Monthly, Living Age, and Wide Awake.  

Noticing her piece "The Child Toilers of Boston Streets" in the February 1878 edition of Wide Awake, The Ottawa Free Trader of Illinois said that "Emma E. Brown gives us a glimpse of Boston New Boys' life."  Sharing what she learned in her travels, Emma wrote "Easter in Florence."  This piece of travel writing was published for that holiday in 1895 in the Turner County Herald of Hurley, South Dakota.