Thorpe, Rose Hartwick (1850–1939)

American poet. Born on July 18, 1850, in Mishawaka, Indiana; died of a heart attack on July 19, 1939, in San Diego, California; daughter of William Morris (a tailor) and Mary Louisa (Wight) Hartwick; married Edmund Carson Thorpe (a carriage maker), on September 11, 1871; children: Lulo May; Lillie Maud.

Penned the popular poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" (1870); wrote for St. Nicholas, Wide Awake, Youth's Companion, and Detroit Free Press; was employed as periodical editor for Temperance Tales, Well-Spring, and Words of Life; wrote five children's novels; published an anthology, The Poetical Works of Rose Hartwick Thorpe (1912).

The daughter of a tailor and pioneer settler, Rose Hartwick Thorpe was a popular poet and novelist. She was born Rose Alnora Hartwick in 1850 in Mishawaka, Indiana, the second of five children of William and Louisa Hartwick , and grew up in Indiana, Kansas, and Litchfield, Michigan. She attended public schools and became drawn to poetry and fiction as a child, enjoying the romantic works of writers such as Longfellow published in popular magazines, and imitating their flowery style in her own amateur verse. When she was 15, she wrote the poem for which she would become best known, "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight." She developed it after reading in Peterson's Magazine a romantic short story, "Love and Loyalty," about a Cavalier heroine of the English Civil War who saved her lover's life. Thorpe rewrote the story in verse, and the poem was read by friends and family who encouraged her to continue writing. Some of her early poems were published by a Detroit newspaper, the Commercial Advertiser.

Thorpe graduated from high school in Litchfield in 1868. Two years later, "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" was published to immediate public acclaim by the Commercial Advertiser. Continually reprinted in newspapers and magazines across the country until the turn of the century, it quickly became one of the most popular sentimental poems of its time, used for poetry recitations in schools and translated for foreign publication. Rose Hartwick Thorpe's name became well known, though she did not hold a copyright on the poem and so did not benefit financially from its popularity. The year after its first publication she married amateur poet Edmund Thorpe, a carriage maker by trade; the couple had two daughters.

Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, Thorpe's short fiction and verse were frequently published in general interest and children's periodicals, including Youth's Companion, the Detroit Free Press, and St. Nicholas. Many of her stories and poems for children were written as religious instruction. The financial problems caused by the failure of Edmund Thorpe's business in 1881 led Rose to accept the position of editor and principal writer for a number of religious magazines published by Fleming H. Revell. She also began to publish full-length juvenile fiction in 1881, when Fred's Dark Days appeared. Four more juvenile books followed, her daughter Lulo May Thorpe providing the illustrations for some of them.

When Edmund Thorpe developed tuberculosis, the Thorpes moved from Michigan to San Antonio, Texas, for his health. Rose Thorpe's last well-known poem, "Remember the Alamo," was written in this period. They soon moved again to San Diego, California, in 1886, where she continued to contribute to literary magazines to support the family. A collection of her verse, The Poetical Works of Rose Hartwick Thorpe, was published in 1912. After Edmund Thorpe died in 1916, she volunteered with the Woman's Club of San Diego and the YWCA, and became involved in the movement for women's suffrage as well. She died at age 89 in 1939.

sources:

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1971.

McHenry, Robert. Famous American Women. NY: Dover, 1980.

Laura York , M.A. in History, University of California, Riverside, California