Augusta Cooper Bristol | |
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| Born | Augusta Cooper April 17, 1835 Croydon, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Died | May 9, 1910(1910-05-09) (aged 75) Vineland, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Occupation | poet, lecturer |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Canaan Union Academy,Kimball Union Academy |
| Literary movement | Positivism |
| Spouse | , |
Augusta Cooper Bristol (April 17, 1835 – May 9, 1910) was an American poet and lecturer. She began teaching at the age of fifteen. In 1869, she published a volume of poems, and, the same year, gave her first public lecture. Beginning in 1872, she was frequently called before the public as a speaker.
Augusta Cooper was born inCroydon, New Hampshire, April 17, 1835. She was the youngest of a family of ten children of Col. Otis and Hannah (Powers) Cooper.[1] Her first verses were written at the age of eight, and she had poems published when only fifteen. She excelled in mathematics and showed in her early life an aptitude for logical and philosophical reasoning. The greater part of her education was acquired in a public school, but she was also a student in Canaan Union Academy andKimball Union Academy.[2][1]
Bristol began teaching at fifteen during summer and winter for seven years. At the age of twenty-two, she married G. H. Kimball, from whom she was divorced five years later. In 1866, she married Louis Bristol, a lawyer ofNew Haven, Connecticut, and they removed tosouthern Illinois. In 1869, she published a volume of poems, of which, a review byThe Congregationalist and Boston Recorder noted: "InPoems by Augusta Cooper Bristol, we fail to discern any remarkable poetic power. They seem to be characterized by a considerable command of language, and something of the poetic temper, with a good deal of the now fashionable cant of 'insight' and 'nature' and non-capital punishment, and things of that kind."[3] In the same year, she gave her first public lecture, which changed the course of her intellectual career.[2][1]
In 1872, she moved toVineland, New Jersey, from which date she developed herself as a platform speaker before the public. For four years, she was president of the Ladies'social science class in Vineland, giving lessons fromHerbert Spencer andHenry Charles Carey every month. In the winter of 1880, she gave a course of lectures before the New YorkPositivist Society on "The Involution of Character," followed by another course under the auspices of the Woman's Social Science Club of that city. In the following June, she was sent by friends inNew York City to study the equitable association of labor and capital at theFamilistère, inGuise, France, founded byJean-Baptiste André Godin. She was also commissioned to represent the New York Positivist Society in an international convention of liberal thinkers inBrussels in September. Remaining in the Familistere for three months and giving a lecture on the "Scientific Basis of Morality" before the Brussels convention, she returned home and published the "Rules and Statutes" of the association in Guise. In 1881, she was chosen state lecturer of thePatrons of Husbandry inNew Jersey. In the autumn of the following year, was employed on a national lecture bureau of that order.[2][1]
After her husband's death in 1882, she seldom appeared upon the platform, but was one of the speakers in theWorld's Congress of Representative Women at theWorld's Columbian Exposition inChicago (1893).[1] She was occupied with the care of an estate and in directing the educational interests of her youngest daughter. Some of her philosophic and scientific lectures were translated and published in foreign countries.[4] She died May 9, 1910, in Vineland.[5]
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain:Metcalf, Henry Harrison (1895).New Hampshire women : a collection of portraits and biographical sketches of daughters and residents of the Granite State, who are worthy representatives of their sex in the various walks and conditions of life (Public domain ed.). New Hampshire Publishing Company. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain:Publishers' Weekly (1911).The Annual Library Index (Public domain ed.). Office of the Publishers' Weekly. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain:Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). "Augusta Cooper Bristol".A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Moulton. p. 123.
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