Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall (1805–1878) was an abolitionist, poet, novelist, editor, botanist, spiritualist medium, and advocate of women's, voters', and workers' rights.
In contrast to many other 19th-century women writers, throughout most of her adult life she earned her living as an author; at the same time she often donated her writing for causes she believed in, such as the abolition of slavery.
[3] In 1829, she founded the literary periodical The Original as editor, catching the attention of critic John Neal, who praised her work in The Yankee, saying that "these are the things we should encourage" and wishing success "to all the she-magazines of our country".
During a part of the year 1842, she conducted The Wampanoag, a journal designed for the elevation of the laboring portion of the community, and thereafter, she was a large contributor to what were called "reform periodicals", particularly The Nineteenth Century, a quarterly miscellany, and The Univercoelum and Spiritual Philosopher, a paper "devoted to philosophico-theology, and an exposition and inculcation of the principles of Nature, in their application to individual and social life".
In the delineations of Indian character and adventure, we see fruits of an intelligent study of the colonial annals, and a nice apprehension of the influences of external nature in psychological development.
Her Songs of the Winds, and sketches of Indian life are frequently characterized by a masculine energy of expression, and a minute observation of nature.
Though occasionally diffuse, and illustrated by epithets or images that will not be approved, perhaps, by the most fastidious tastes, they have meaning in them, and the reader is not often permitted to forget the presence of the power and delicacy of the poetical faculty."