Larcom (1824-93) was an American poet and author born in Beverley, Massachusetts, the ninth of ten children. Her father died when she was eight and aged eleven she left home to work in the cotton mills in Lowell. During her ten years there she wrote many songs, poems and letters describing the mill-girl life which she got published, attracting the attention of John Greenleaf Whittier with her idealistic poems. In the 1840s Larcom took up teaching and continued in the profession for around 20 years. She later became editor of the Boston-based magazine 'Our Young Folks' which eventually merged with 'St Nicholas Magazine.' In 1889 she published 'A New England Girlhood, ' an account of her early life which has become a standard reference work in the study of antebellum American childhood. This biography which draws on her letters and diary was first published in 1895