PERRY, Miss Nora

Nora Perry was a New England poet, newspaper correspondent, and author. Her poems “Tying her Bonnet under her Chin” and “After the Ball” shot her to literary fame and were reprinted in newspapers across the country. Her early success led her to write society pieces for The Chicago Tribune and The Providence Journal in her later years.

Born in Dudley, Massachusetts in 1831, Miss Perry was the youngest of three children. Her family relocated to Providence, Rhode Island while she was still a child. An avid writer even in her youth, Miss Perry eventually became a part of Sarah Helen Whitman’s literary circle in Providence. Nora would wake early in the morning and write until noon at an old-fashioned table that she called her “shop” in her living room, where she kept her collection of chromolithographs wherever there was space to put them. Occasionally, she would write another hour or two in the afternoon, but almost never wrote in the evening. Around the time that she became a professional writer, Nora destroyed all of her writings from her adolescence.

Nora continued to write lyrical poetry throughout her life, but she also wrote short stories for adolescent readers. It was a natural progression for her to write from the point of view of a young person, as Miss Perry was often described as “vivacious with an intense personality and wit”. As Nora wrote:
“I have too much youth for the rest of the world at my age. Life never seems old to me, always fresh.”

Her young adult stories were intended to inspire higher ideals in its readers. That was the power of literature to Miss Perry:
“Nothing is so practical as the ideal which is ever at hand to uphold and better the real.”

Nora was not a religious person. She had no qualms about declaring her agnosticism or, as she referred to it, “the agnosticism of don’t know.” Instead of following religious doctrine, she believed in a “practical service to humanity,” which she practiced in part by encouraging young writers in their craft. Though not religious, Nora did believe in the supernatural. She possessed a moonstone talisman that she felt helped in her literary success and brought her good luck.

Though she was never married, Nora preferred male companionship, as she enjoyed their point of view and way of thinking. She developed intimate friendships with John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, and George William Curtis to name just a few. Yet, she also maintained many female friends as well. Harriet Prescott Spofford was one such friend and sister-poet, who wrote of her friend’s poetic style:
“Nora Perry writes in verse because she cannot help it. The music bubbles up in her as the water gushes in a spring, and whenever she has allowed art to clear the way the result is a ‘well of English undefiled.’”

Miss Perry adored her hair, which was often described as a reddish-golden blonde and pale blonde in her later years. It pleased her when people admired it. In fact, hair descriptions often found their way into her writing.

In her later years, Miss Perry was struck with what was referred to as “author’s cramp” or “writer’s cramp,” which affected her ability to write. The pain was so great, she nearly lost the use of her right hand and taught herself to write left-handed so she could rest her dominant one.

Nora Perry passed away on May 13, 1896 of an aneurysm while visiting Dudley, Massachusetts. As Caroline Ticknor wrote in The Lamp:
“To the friends who had loved her, and would gladly have ministered to her in her last hours, it was a deep grief that she should have died alone in a boarding-house. And yet her solitary passing seemed somehow in harmony with her own independent, self-contained mode of living.”

Miss Perry was buried at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island.

Perry, Nora.  After The Ball, and Other Poems.  Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875.  In Internet Archive