Amy Lowell

’s Life And Career Essay, Research Paper

Marcia B. Dinneen

Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the daughter of

Augustus Lowell and Katherine Bigelow Lawrence. Both sides of the family were New England

aristocrats, wealthy and prominent members of society. Augustus Lowell was a businessman,

civic leader, and horticulturalist, Katherine Lowell an accomplished musician and

linguist. Although considered as "almost disreputable," poets were part of the

Lowell family, including James Russell Lowell, a first cousin, and later Robert Lowell.

As the daughter of a wealthy family, Lowell was first educated at the family home,

"Sevenels" (named by her father as a reference to the seven Lowells living

there), by an English governess who left her with a lifelong inability to spell. Her first

poem, "Chacago," written at age nine, is testament to this problem. In the fall

of 1883 Lowell began attending a series of private schools in Brookline and Boston. At

school she was "the terror of the faculty" (Gould, p. 32). Even at Mrs. Cabot’s

school, founded by a Lowell cousin to educate her own children and the children of friends

and relations, Lowell was "totally indifferent to classroom decorum. Noisy,

opinionated, and spoiled, she terrorized the other students and spoke back to her

teachers" (Heymann, p. 164).

During school vacations Lowell traveled with her family. She went to Europe and to New

Mexico and California. On the latter trip she kept a travel journal. Lowell enjoyed

writing, and two stories she wrote during this time were printed in Dream Drops; or,

Stories from Fairyland (1887), by a "Dreamer." The volume was published

privately by her mother, who also contributed material, and the proceeds were donated to

the Perkins Institute for the Blind.

Lowell’s schooling included the usual classes in English, history, French, literature,

and a little Italian. As Lowell later noted, "My family did not consider that it was

necessary for girls to learn either Greek or Latin" (Damon, p. 87). She would also

describe her formal education as not amounting to "a hill of beans" (Benvenuto,

p. 6). School ended in 1891, and Lowell made her debut. Described as the "most

popular debutante of the season," she went to sixty dinners given in her honor. Her

popularity was attributed to her skills in dancing and in the art of conversation, but her

debut did not produce the expected marriage proposal.

Although Lowell had finished formal schooling, she continued to educate herself.

Unfortunately, higher education was not an option for Lowell women. She put herself

through a "rigorous" reading program, using her father’s 7,000-volume library

and the resources of the Boston Athenaeum (her great-grandfather was one of the founders).

Later Lowell would successfully speak out against the proposed relocation of the

Athenaeum; this would also become the subject of a poem. Lowell’s love of books themselves

began with her first "Rollo" book, Rollo Learning to Read, which

her mother gave her when she was six. This gift marked the beginning of an enthusiasm for

book collecting that would last throughout her life. In 1891 she made her first major

purchase of a set of the complete works of Sir Walter Scott with money she had received as

a Christmas gift. It was, however, her collection of Keatsiana, including a rare first

edition of Lamia inscribed to F. B. from J. K. (Fanny Brawne from John Keats), that

put her in the forefront of international book collectors.

Following her debut, Lowell led the life of a prominent socialite, visiting, going to

parties and the theater, and traveling. Her mother, who had been an invalid for years,

died in 1895. A disappointment in love prompted a winter trip to Egypt in 1897-1898.

Lowell had accepted the proposal of a Bostonian whom she loved, but before the engagement

was formally announced he "became entangled elsewhere" (Damon, p. 120).

"The family could do nothing to protect her except guard tenaciously the name of the

errant suitor" (Gould, p. 65). The trip was also for "health" reasons.

Doctors felt Lowell’s obesity could be cured by the Egyptian heat and a diet of nothing

but tomatoes and asparagus. The regimen almost killed her and resulted in a

"prolonged nervous collapse." In 1900 Lowell’s father died, and she bought

Sevenels. She also bought a summer home in Dublin, New Hampshire, that she named

"Broomley Lacey." The area was home to the MacDowell Artists’ Colony as well as

to other notable painters and sculptors.

In Brookline Lowell assumed her father’s civic responsibilities. Early in 1902 she

spoke against the reappointment of the elderly superintendent of the Brookline public

school system. She was the "first woman in the Lowell

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