Elizabeth Oakes Smith

Elizabeth Oakes Prince Smith (b. 1806–d. 1893), born near North Yarmouth, Maine, drew literary inspiration from the region’s landscape, cultures, and histories. At sixteen she married Seba Smith, an author roughly twice her age. She began contributing to a Portland periodical he edited while caring for a large household. The shift from girlhood’s promise to women’s realities is a recurring theme in her work. Changing pen names reflect the evolution of her identities as author and activist. From early anonymous contributions signed “E,” she went on to publish as Mrs. Seba Smith, use the pseudonym Ernest Helfenstein, and claim authorship in her own right as Elizabeth (or E.) Oakes Smith. She published her first novel Riches Without Wings (1838) in response to the Panic of 1837 that led to her family’s financial losses, relocation to Charleston, South Carolina, and resettlement in New York. Forming new literary connections, she published prolifically in journals and first earned wide recognition for her poem “The Sinless Child” (1842), followed by The Sinless Child and Other Poems (1843) and The Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1845). Oakes Smith gained renown for work in diverse genres including short stories, novels, plays, women’s rights essays and convention speeches, lyceum lectures, nature writing, children’s literature, gift books, sketches, and spiritual literature. Among various contributions to the feminist movement, she wrote an influential series of newspaper articles republished in Woman and Her Needs (1851). Oakes Smith’s activism was informed by Transcendentalist and spiritualist ideals expressed in such works as Bertha and Lily (1854) and Shadow Land; or The Seer (1852). A celebrated outdoorswoman, she published accounts of hiking in Maine along with fiction and poetry depicting women’s relationships to nature. Her ongoing engagement with Native American themes is evident in The Western Captive (1842), The Sagamore of Saco (1868), and various other works. Oakes Smith wrote about interlocking systemic injustices, critically examining gender inequality, slavery, dispossession of Native lands, capital punishment, racial violence, and economic disparities. The Newsboy (1854) calls attention to child labor, working poverty, housing insecurity, and injustices in the prison system. Oakes Smith’s experiences of the Civil War and Reconstruction coincided with family difficulties, deaths, and financial instability. She served in 1877 as pastor of the Independent Church of Canastota, New York, continuing to write and lecture late in life. Oakes Smith died in 1893 leaving unpublished manuscripts of great interest to scholars recovering her work and legacy.