Eliza Cook was the youngest of the eleven children of a brazier (a brass-worker) living in London Road, Southwark, where she was born.

Her mother encouraged Eliza's fondness for imaginative literature, and despite attending the local Sunday school the child was almost entirely self-educated.

[1] She began to write verses before she was fifteen, contributing to the Weekly Dispatch and New Monthly,[2] and published her first poetry collection two years later; indeed, some of her most popular poems, such as "I'm afloat" and the "Star of Glengarry," were composed in her girlhood.

Familiar with the London Chartist movement in its various sects, she followed many of the older radicals in disagreeing with the O'Brienites and O'Connorites in their disregard for the repeal of the Corn Laws.

Although some found solace in Cook's work, the periodical was short lived due to lack of appreciation among the majority.

It included many essays and sketches that were written in a clear and simple manner, usually conveying a moral lesson for the reader.

Cook was a Chartist,[8] one of "a body of 19th century English political reformers advocating better social and industrial conditions for the working classes."

The goal of Chartist poetry is to create a sense of camaraderie for the people within a vast community who found themselves oppressed and suffering.

[10] Along with these views Cook was a proponent of political and sexual freedom for women, and believed in the ideology of self-improvement through education, something she called "levelling up."

Her peers described her as having short "boyish" hair, a "mannish appearance," and mentioned that she wore lapelled jackets which showed off her shirt front and ruffles, described as "a very masculine style, which was considered strange at the time.