Cowen, who descended from a family of Jewish-Irish scholars, was born in London, UK, but emigrated to the United States when she was eleven months old.
[citation needed] In the preface to the Cowen Haggadah, Lillie writes: "At a Seder service given to a number of friends, their wives and older children, the thought occurred to me that the service was marred because of typographical blunders, bad grammar, and mis-translations which abounded in the books used, and, as I knew, in all the books obtainable in this country.
I determined, therefore, if the Lord spared me, to issue in the near future a Haggada which would not cause derision among the younger generation but which would be read with interest and with reverence."
In the publisher's introduction, we find: "In “Who Knows” some liberty has been taken with numbers eight and nine, in view of the fact that this part of the service is especially designed for the children."
Lillie's "solution" to use the 9th of Av instead, can be traced back to much older “Ashkenazi” translations, e.g. in the 1712 Amsterdam Haggadah.