Ellen Sturgis Hooper

She was, besides, sister of Caroline Sturgis Tappan, also a Transcendentalist and poet, as well as an acquaintance of William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James, Sr.

• Name — Ellen Sturgis Hooper • Birth Name — Ellen Sturgis • Born — 17 February 1812 • Birthplace — Boston, Massachusetts, US • Died — 3 November 1848 • Place of death — Boston, Massachusetts, US • Occupation — Poet • Movement — Transcendentalism

Ellen Sturgis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of William Sturgis and Elizabeth M. Davis. Her father was a wealthy Boston merchant. Her mother was an intelligent and independent woman who spent much time away from her husband, inspiring in her daughter the idea to seek self-fulfillment. In 1837, she married physician Robert William Hooper, though her friends said they were not a good match because he was intellectually inferior. Margaret Fuller, for example, said the match was like "perfume... wasted on the desert wind". The couple had three children: Ellen Sturgis "Nella" Hooper (1838–1887), who married professor Ephraim Whitman Gurney (1829–1886), Edward William "Ned" Hooper (1839–1901), and Marian "Clover" Hooper, who married Henry Adams and became a celebrated Washington, D.C., hostess and photographer. Hooper's poetry was regularly commissioned by Ralph Waldo Emerson and published in The Dial. Her poems also appeared in Elizabeth Peabody's Æsthetic Papers (1849), and the final stanzas of one of her poems, The Wood-Fire, appear in Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854). Hooper died of tuberculosis at age 36. Her early death is said to have "enshrined her in the memories of her associates as a Transcendental angel".

The authorities additionally record the heading Ellen Sturgis. She was the child of William Sturgis and Elizabeth Marston Davis. She married Robert William Hooper. 3 children are recorded: Edward W. Hooper, Marian Hooper Adams and Ellen Sturgis Hooper.