Eliza Lee Follen

The fifth of 13 children in an affluent Boston family, poet, children’s author, and editor Eliza Lee Follen became a prominent member of Boston’s religious and literary communities.

In her 20s Follen joined a religious discussion group where she met her husband, Charles Follen, a German expatriate whose democratic views were outlawed by the German government. They had one son together.

The Follens were early anti-slavery activists. Charles was the first German professor at Harvard, though his career there was cut short, possibly due to his abolitionist work.

Follen is the author of The Skeptic (1835), Sketches of Married Life (1838), and several works for children. Her children’s verse is noted for including nonsense and nursery rhyme while avoiding the more violent imagery common at the time. In addition to her own work, which explores political and religious themes, Follen’s Poems (1839) includes her translation of a selection of German poetry. She edited two Sunday school periodicals, The Christian Teachers Manual from 1828 to 1830, and The Child’s Friend from 1843 to 1850. Follen also edited the first American edition of Grimm’s fairy tales, Gammer Grethel (1840). She published the political writings of her husband and of François Fénelon, a 17th-century French liberal theorist.

After her husband’s death at sea in 1840, Follen increasingly devoted herself to activism and publishing. She died in Brookline, Massachusetts.