Helen F. H. Jackson
American Poet and Novelist
1831 – 1885 A.D.

Helen Fiske Hunt Jackson, better known by her pen name of H.H., an American poet and novelist. At twenty-one she married Capt. Edward Hunt of the U.S. army, and began the wandering existence of an army officer’s wife. After the death of her husband in 1863 she wrote constantly and under her pen name of H.H. was widely read.

Her life in the West after her marriage to W.S. Jackson in 1875 revealed to her the wrongs of the Indian, which she set herself to redress. Her most popular story, Ramona, a romance whose protagonists are of Indian blood, was also an appeal for justice. This book, however, rose far above its polemic intention; the beauty of its descriptions, its dramatic movement, its admirable characterization, and its imaginative insight entitling it to high rank.

Her poems probably constitute her best claim to remembrance, and such good judges as Emerson and T.W. Higginson have admired her lyrics.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.