[3] While Anna was still young, her parents moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where she attended a private school.

[1] Its summer institute only having been started two years earlier, Rhodes was one of the first black women to participate in the program.

The president, John Mercer Langston, LL.D., commenting on the essay, its delivery, etc., said that for chasteness of language, beauty of diction and composition it was one of the best he had ever heard.

[1] Anna married fellow educator Irvine Garland Penn on 26 December 1889, in Lynchburg, Virginia.

'[1] As Smith notes, however, Penn also used her poetry to explore themes of a more personal nature, such as love and grief.

[5] Described during her lifetime as 'a great helpmate to her husband in his busy career,'[8] Penn has since been acknowledged as providing valuable assistance to Irvine when preparing his first book: The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (1891).

[9] Though Majors wrote in his 1893 work that 'the reading Afro-American must not be surprised if the Madame gives a book to the world of letters in the near future',[5] Penn does not appear to have published one.