Born on November 5th 1850 in Johnstown, Wisconsin, Ella Wheeler was the youngest of four children. She began to write as a child and by the time she graduated was already well known as a poet throughout Wisconsin. Regarded more as a popular poet than a literary poet her most famous work 'Solitude' reflects on a train journey she made where giving comfort to a distressed fellow traveller she wrote how the others grief imposed itself for a time on her 'Laugh and the world laughs with you, Weep and you weep alone'.

It was published in 1883 and was immensely popular. The following year, 1884, she married Robert Wilcox. They lived for a time in New York before moving to Connecticut. Their only child, a son, died shortly after birth. Here we publish one of her many poetry books, Custer & Other Poems, that so endeared her to her audience. Ella died of breast cancer on October 30th, 1919.

Index Of Poems
Worth while
The House of Life
A Song of Life
Prayer
In the Long Run
As you go through Life
Two Sunsets
Unrest
Artist's life
Nothing but Stones
Inevitable
The Ocean of Song
"It might have been"
Momus, God of Laughter
I Dream
The Sonnet
The Past
A Dream
Uselessness
Will
Winter Rain
Life
Burdened
Let them go
Five Kisses
Retrospection
Helena
Nothing Remains
Comrades
What Gain?
To the West
The Land of Content
Warning
After the Battles are over
And they are dumb
Night
All for me
Into Space
Through Dim Eyes
The Punished
Half Fledged
The Year
The Unattained
In the crowd
Life and I
Guerdon
Snowed Under
"Leudemanns-on-the-river"
Little Blue Hood
No Spring
Midsummer
A Reminiscence
A Girl's Faith
Two
Slipping Away
Is it done?
A Leaf
Aesthetic
Poems of the Week
Ghosts
Fleeing away
All mad
Hidden Gems
By-and-bye
Over the May Hill
Foes
Friendship
Two sat down
Bound and free
Aquileia
Wishes for a little girl
Romney
My Home
To marry or not to marry?
An Afternoon
River and Sea
What happens?
Possession
Ella Wheeler Wilcox - A Short Biography
Ella Wheeler Wilcox - A Concise Bibliography