Educated privately in New York, Julia married Samuel Gridley Howe in 1843 and the couple moved to Boston, where they published the abolitionist newspaper, Commonwealth, for a number of years. In 1853, she published Passion Flowers, a book of verse that was very popular at the time. After a visit to Abraham Lincoln in 1861, she wrote the lyrics to The Battle Hymn of the Republic which was later put to the music of John Brown's Body and became the iconic melody of the Civil War. In 1868, she founded the New England Woman Suffrage Association and, later that same year, The New England Woman's Club. From 1870 to 1890, she edited the Woman's Journal. In 1908, Howe became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her other works include Words for the Hour (1857), Later Lyrics (1866), Sex and Education (1874), Modern Society (1881), Margaret Fuller (1883), Woman's Work in America (1891), Is Polite Society Polite? and Other Essays (1895), Reminiscences 1819-1899 (1899) and At Sunset (1910 Posthumous). |
