Elizabeth "Lizzie" Doten (April 1, 1827 – January 15, 1913) was an American poet and a prominent spiritualist lecturer and trance speaker and writer who received special attention for her supposed ability to channel poetry from Edgar Allan Poe after his death. She wrote poetry, fiction, and essays and edited an annual spiritualist publication, Lily of the Valley. She was active on the lecture circuit between 1864 and 1880.
Family and early life
Elizabeth Doten was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the seventh of nine children. Both her parents were Mayflower descendants: Her father Samuel’s ancestor was Edward Doty, and her mother Rebecca was descended from William Bradford, the Pilgrim governor of Plymouth Colony. Her brothers, Major Samuel Doten (1812–1906) and Captain Charles Doten (1833–1918) led the first two Union companies to deploy from Plymouth in the Civil War. Another brother, Alfred Doten (1829–1903) left for the California gold fields on a sailing ship in 1849 and later became a journalist in Nevada. He is best known for his intimate daily journals chronicling Western American life in the last half of the 19th century.
Lizzie Doten (she exclusively used the name Lizzie Doten, never Elizabeth, in her professional life) was educated in Plymouth public schools before spending a year in a private school in Plymouth at the age of 17. She reported to have had psychic experiences as a child, leading to a lifelong interest in Spiritualism. She also wrote poetry as a child. In the lengthy introduction to her first book of poetry, Poems of the Inner Life, she described the mystical experiences in her childhood that shaped her life, and later her “passive surrender to the inspirations that moved upon me – I have held conscious communion with disembodied spirits.” She went on to describe the nature of the mental and physical effects of this communion. She reported that some of the poems in her book were dictated by Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Robert Burns, and one came to her as a prophecy of the fate (unknown at the time she wrote the poem) of the Arctic explorers under Sir John Franklin.
