Helen Leah Reed (1861/62 – 1926) was a Canadian-born American author. An essayist, a contributor to periodical literature, and the author of a volume of poems, a novel, and a series of historical stories for girls, she was also interested in education and philanthropy.
Early life and education
Helen Leah Reed was born in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, March 13, 1861/62. Her parents were Dr. Guilford Shaw and Ella (Berryman) Reed. Her father was born at Wilmot, Nova Scotia, and died at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1908. He was the son of Granville Bevil and Leah (Green) Reed of Nova Scotia. He was of New England ancestry, and his Reed forbears, who were Loyalists, had migrated to Nova Scotia in the epoch of the Revolution. Helen traced her ancestry also to Roger Williams and to the Greene family of Rhode Island and other Colonial families. Her mother was the daughter of John Berryman of St. John, granddaughter of John and Catharine (Edgar) Berryman of England, and the great-granddaughter of Peter and Elizabeth (Annesley) Wade of New York, who were Loyalists. Helen's parents came to Boston in 1865. Helen's siblings were: Ethel, Arthur, Edwin, Harry, John, and Catharine.
Reed studied at Radcliffe College in its early days and was admitted there to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1890, from which she graduated. She was a student of Latin and Greek, and in 1890, was the first woman to win the Sargent Prize, offered by Harvard University for a metrical translation from Horace, which version was published in Scribner's Magazine.
