Elizabeth Porter Gould

Elizabeth Porter Gould (June 8, 1848 – 1906) was an American poet, essayist, and suffragist who edited an early anthology of selections from Walt Whitman's work and wrote extensively on subjects related to education.

Early years and family

Elizabeth Porter Gould was born in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, the daughter of John Averell Gould and Elizabeth Cheever (Leach) Gould. Among her New England ancestors were the schoolmaster Ezekiel Cheever, Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Dudley, and colonist Zaccheus Gould. The family moved to Chelsea when she was a girl.

Literary career

Gould published several collections of her own verse, including Stray Pebbles from the Shores of Thought (1892) and One's Self I Sing, and Other Poems (1904). She wrote lyrics for a number of songs, including "Columbia—America", which became the anthem of the Massachusetts chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Gould greatly admired the poetry of Walt Whitman, and in 1889, she published a collection of extracts from his poetry, Gems from Walt Whitman. It also included a poem she wrote in honor of Whitman and an essay, "Walt Whitman Among the Soldiers". It was the first time that Whitman had allowed anyone but his editor William Rossetti to publish such selections and he regretted it afterwards (as he had previously with Rossetti), feeling that his poetry did not lend itself to fragmentary extracts. The novelist William Dean Howells, however, wrote that Gould's book "shows [Whitman] in his supreme moments" with passages likely to offend contemporary middle-class taste "wisely left out". Several critics felt that Gould's edition was useful for its potential to draw new readers to Whitman — which was indeed one of Gould's primary reasons for issuing the collection. An unusual feature of the book was that it was wider than it was tall (7 x 5.5. inches) in order to accommodate Whitman's long poetic lines without breaking them.