Eliza Woodworth

Eliza Woodworth was born in Perry, New York and educated largely in the private library of her father, a minister. She never married, and had some long-term health problems, which, in an article published in The Ladies’ Repository in 1874, “Journeyings of an Invalid,” she described as “the feeble tabernacle of the flesh in which I suffer” but argued that her “spirit may wander over all the interesting places that are scattered through the wide, beautiful world.” In that article, Woodworth described her varied reading habits, arguing that books will widen a reader’s heart “in sympathy with far-off human creatures, living in different conditions from your own, but not aliens.”

Woodworth edited the anthology Selections from the British Poets (1956) and published articles and poems in journals. It is unclear when she moved to Washington, DC, but she was living here in 1895, and was included in the anthology The Poets and Poetry of Washington edited by Ina Russelle Warren.