Maria White Lowell
Poet
American poet, abolitionist, and teetotaler whose poem, 'The Grave of Keats,' was published by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Her other poems include 'The Morning-Glory' and 'The Alpine Shepherd.'
She was born into an intellectual family and, as a young girl, lived an ascetic lifestyle at an Ursuline Convent.
Emily Dickinson knew Lowell's work and may have found poetic inspiration in it. Lowell's poem "The Sick Room," in fact, is quite "Dickinsonian" in tone and content.
She married fellow poet James Russell Lowell in 1844. Sadly, only one of the couple's four children survived to adulthood.
She was an ancestor of poet Amy Lowell.