English author
Born 1818 Died 1889
Eliza Cook was born on the 24th of December 1818, in Southwark, being the daughter of a local tradesman. She was self-taught, and began when a girl to write poetry for the Weekly Dispatch and New Monthly. In 1838 she published Melaia and other Poems, and from 1849 to 1854 conducted a paper for family reading called Eliza Cook's Journal. She also published Jottings from my Journal (1860), and New Echoes (1864); and in 1863 she was given a civil list pension of £100 a year. As the author of a single poem, The Old Armchair, Eliza Cook's name was for a generation after 1838 a household word both in England and in America, her kindly domestic sentiment making her a great favourite with the working-class and middle-class public. She died at Wimbledon on the 23rd of September 1889.
Being the entry for COOK, ELIZA in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, the text of which lies within the public domain.