Helen Maria Jackson

Helen Maria Jackson (1831—1885), American poet and novelist, who wrote under the intials of “ H. H.” (Helen Hunt), was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on the 18th of October 1831, the daughter of Nathan Welby Fiske (1798—1847), who was a professor in Amherst College. In October 1852 she married Lieutenant Edward Bissell Hunt (1822—1863), of the U.S. corps of engineers. In 1870 she published a little volume of meditative Verses, which was praised by Emerson in the preface to his Parnassus (1874). In 1875 she married William S. Jackson, a banker, of Colorado Springs. She became a prolific writer of prose and verse, including juvenile tales, books of travel, household hints and novels, of which the best is Raniona (1884), a defence of the Indian character. In 1883, as a special commissioner with Abbot Kinney (b. 1850), she investigated the condition and needs of the Mission Indians in California. A Century of Dishonor (1881) was an arraignment of the treatment of the Indians by the United States. She died on the 12th of August 1885 in San Francisco.

In addition to her publications referred to above, Mercy Philbrick’s Choice (1876), Hetty’s Strange History (1877), Zeph (1886), and Sonnets and Lyrics (1886) may be mentioned.