Author: Cook, Eliza
Biography:
COOK, Eliza (1812-89: ODNB)
She was previously thought to have been born in 1818, but 1812 is correct. She was born on 24 Dec. 1812 in Southwark, Surrey, to Joseph Cook, a tinplate maker, and his wife Mary whose surname at birth is not known. Eliza Cook was the youngest of their eleven children and she was baptised on 3 Feb. 1813 at St. Mary’s, Newington. The family moved to a farm near Horsham, Sussex, in about 1821. Likely she had little formal education but she began writing verse at an early age; the poems in Lays of a Wild Harp were written when she was about seventeen. Her mother died in about 1827 and one of Cook’s best-known poems, “The Old Arm-Chair” reflects on her loss. She contributed poems signed with her initials to periodicals; they were much admired and readers clamoured for the name of the poet. The Weekly Dispatch finally revealed her authorship in 1837, the year before she published a second collection, Melaia and Other Poems. A third followed in 1845 and in 1849 she established her own weekly periodical, Eliza Cook’s Journal, where her essays espoused democratic ideals and advocated better educational and employment opportunities for women. She suffered from poor health and ceased publishing the weekly in 1854; by then it had achieved a wide circulation. Some of her essays were later collected and issued as Jottings from my Journal (1860). Collected editions of her poems were published throughout her lifetime. By the time of the 1871 Census she was living with a nephew, Alfred Pyall, and his family in Beech House, Thornton Road, Wimbledon. Her occupation is given as “author.” She died at Beech House on 23 Sept. 1889 and was buried at St. Mary’s, Wimbledon, on 30 Sept. Her will names Pyall and her brother, Charles, as executors and she left an estate of £5957. Her other publications include New Echoes and Other Poems (1864) and Diamond Dust (1865). (ODNB 5 Feb. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 5 Feb. 2024; Alexis Easley, “Making a Debut,” in The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women’s Writing [2015])