Julia A. Moore
In her mid-teens, she started writing poetry and songs, mostly in response to the death of children she knew, but any newspaper account of disaster could inspire her.
A copy ended up in the hands of James F. Ryder, a Cleveland publisher, who republished it under the title The Sweet Singer of Michigan Salutes the Public.
[1] The Hartford Daily Times said that to meet such steady and unremitting demands on the lachrymal ducts one must be provided, as Sam Weller suspected Job Trotter was, 'with a main, as is allus let on.
'… The collection became a curious best-seller, though it is unclear whether this was due to public amusement with Moore's poetry or genuine appreciation of the admittedly "sentimental" character of her poems.
The ending of "Sunshine and Shadow" was perhaps intended to be self-referential: the farmer facing foreclosure is gratefully rescued by his wife's publishing her secret cache of fiction.
Like McGonagall, she held a maidenly bluestocking's allegiance to the Temperance movement, and frequently indited odes to the joys of sobriety.
Most importantly, like McGonagall, she was drawn to themes of accident, disaster, and sudden death; as has been said of A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, in her pages you can count the dead and wounded.
Her less morbid side is on display when she hymns Temperance Reform Clubs: Many a man joined the club That never drank a drachm, Those noble men were kind and brave They care not for the slang -- The slang they meet on every side: "You're a reform drunkard, too; You've joined the red ribbon brigade, Among the drunkard crew."
Twain alluded to her work in Following the Equator, and it is widely assumed that Moore served as a literary model for the character of Emmeline Grangerford in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
is not far removed from Moore's poems on subjects like Little Libbie: One more little spirit to Heaven has flown, To dwell in that mansion above, Where dear little angels, together roam, In God's everlasting love.
The Oxford Companion to American Literature describes Nash as using Moore's hyperdithyrambic meters, pseudo-poetic inversions, gangling asymmetrical lines, extremely pat or elaborately inexact rimes, parenthetical dissertations, and unexpected puns.Selections of Moore appeared in D. B. Wyndham-Lewis and Charles Lee's Stuffed Owl anthology,[citation needed] and in other collections of bad poetry.
[citation needed] Her complete poetry and prose, with biography, notes, and references, can be found in the Riedlinger edited collection Mortal Refrains.
Ewell, J.B. Smiley, and Fred Yapple — do not appear to have had relationships with each other, but their proximity and similar penchant for exceptionally laughable verse have led to their posthumous grouping together.
