Sneha Girap (Editor)

Ella Rhoads Higginson

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Name
  
Ella Higginson

Role
  
Writer

Ella Rhoads Higginson westwwueducpnwsfindingaidscpnwscentennialpe
Died
  
1940, Bellingham, Washington, United States

Books
  
Alaska - the great country, When the birds go north again, From the land of the snow‑pearls, The flower that grew in the sand

Ella Rhoads Higginson (c. January 28, 1862 – December 27, 1940) was a prominent American author. She wrote award-winning fiction, poetry, and essays characteristically set in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. She was the author of 2 collections of short stories, 6 books of poetry, a novel, a travel book, over 100 short stories, over 300 poems, and numerous newspaper essays. She was influential for the ways her writing drew international attention to the then little-known Pacific Northwest region of the United States (Baym, 2011: 284; Blair, 1997: 52).

Contents

Life

Ella Rhoads was born in Council Grove, Kansas, to Charles Reeve Rhoads and Mary A. Rhoads. She was the youngest of six children (Koert, 1985: 4). In 1863, the family traveled by wagon train from Kansas to Oregon and first settled in Eastern Oregon’s Grand Ronde Valley (Koert, 1985: 5, 7). They later moved to Portland, then to a farm near Milwaukie, then to Oregon City. Ella was privately tutored and also attended public school (Gray, 1997: 274). At age 23, she married Russell Carden Higginson, age 33, a druggist from the Northeastern United States. He was a distant cousin of New England writer and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Koert, 1985: 27, 24). In 1888, Ella and Russell Higginson moved to New Whatcom (later Bellingham), Washington where they would live the rest of their lives. Higginson traveled to Alaska for four consecutive summers as part of the research for her travel book. In 1892, the Higginson house in Bellingham was built. On May 14, 1909, Russell Higginson, age 57, died after a short illness. During WWI, Ella Higginson ceased to write during the war years and volunteered full-time for the American Red Cross. She died on December 27, 1940, at age 78, having been ill most of the year. She left an estate of about $60,000. She is buried in Bayview Cemetery, Bellingham, Washington beneath a self-designed granite monument adorned with four-leaf clovers, a reference to her most well-known poem (Koert, 1985: 7).

Writing

Ella Rhoads began writing as a child. Her first published work was the poem, “Dreams of the Past,” which appeared in The Oregon City newspaper in 1875 when she was age 14. At this time, she also began sending out her short fiction for publication, much of it anonymously or under various pseudonyms (such as “Ann Lester,” “Ethelind Ray,” and “Enid”). After her marriage, she began publishing under her own name (Koert, 1985: 22). On March 8, 1890, an article by Higginson appeared in Portland, Oregon’s West Shore, a literary magazine. The article's controversial topic was divorce. In the article, Higginson argued that early marriage was more of a problem for women than divorce. Her recommendation that women would be wise to marry no earlier than age 30 garnered Higginson national notice (Koert, 1985: 52). That same year what would become her most well-known poem, “Four-Leaf Clover,” was published. In 1893, Higginson’s story “The Mother of ‘Pills’” won McClure’s magazine award for best story. The following year Higginson won McClure’s magazine short fiction contest, with a prize of $500, for “The Takin’ In of Ol’ Mis’ Lane.” McClure’s printed 80,000 copies of the issue in anticipation of high demand. In 1897, the Macmillan company became Higginson's main publisher. They published most of her subsequent books and heavily promoted her writing. In 1902, when Higginson’s only novel, Mariella, of Out West, was published, reviewers compared it to novels by Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, and Emile Zola. In 1908, Alaska, the Great Country, an account of Higginson's travels in Alaska as well as a history of Alaska, was published and subsequently went through several editions (Murray, 1990: 132). In 1914, Higginson’s story “The Message of Ann Laura Sweet” was named Collier’s magazine prize story and awarded a prize of $2500 by a panel consisting of former US President Theodore Roosevelt and investigative journalists Mark Sullivan and Ida Tarbell. With these publications and awards, Higginson became known as the most popular writer of the Pacific Northwest (Baym, 2011: 55-56; Ward and Maveety, 1995: 57-59).

Editorial work

Higginson started her lifelong editorial work at age 15 when she began work at the newspaper office of The Oregon City Enterprise, learning typesetting and editorial writing. In later years, she served as editor of the “Fact and Fancy for Women” department for Portland, Oregon’s West Shore, a literary magazine; as associate editor of The Pacific magazine in Seattle; and as associate editor for the Seattle magazine, The Westerner (Koert, 1985: 89).

Politics

In 1912, Higginson served as campaign manager for Washington State Republican candidate Frances C. Axtell, cousin of United States President Grover Cleveland. Axtell became the first female member of the Washington State Legislature (Koert, 1985: 118-119).

Honors

Higginson was the recipient of several national awards for her short fiction. In 1931, Higginson was named Poet Laureate of Washington State (Bennett, 1998: 490; Blair, 1997: 34).

List of books

This list is compiled from Blain, 1990: 520; and Koert, 1985: 150-151.

A Bunch of Western Clover (Bellingham, Washington: Edson & Irish, 1894).

The Flower That Grew in the Sand and Other Stories (Seattle: The Calvert Company, 1896); reprinted as From the Land of the Snow Pearls (NY: Macmillan, 1897).

A Forest Orchid and Other Stories (NY: Macmillan, 1897).

When the Birds Go North Again (NY: Macmillan, 1898).

The Snow-Pearls (Seattle: Lowman and Hanford, 1897); reprinted Macmillan, 1902.

Four-Leaf Clover: A Little Book of Verse (Bellingham, Washington: Edson & Irish, 1901).

Mariella of Out-West (NY: Macmillan, 1902).

The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (NY: Macmillan, 1903).

Alaska, the Great Country (NY: Macmillan 1908).

The Vanishing Race (Bellingham, Washington: C.M. Sherman, 1911).

References

Ella Rhoads Higginson Wikipedia