Catherine Ann Warfield
Catherine Ann Warfield was a poet and novelist born in 1816 in Natchez, Mississippi, into a family of notable Southern heritage. After her mother experienced mental health challenges, her father moved the family to Philadelphia, where Warfield received a unique education that diverged from her sister Eleanor's more traditional schooling. At sixteen, she married Robert Elisha Warfield and eventually had six children while living in Kentucky. In the 1840s, she and Eleanor published two poetry collections that received initial praise from contemporary poet William Cullen Bryant, although later critics noted their conventional style. Warfield's first novel, "The Household of Bouverie," published in 1860, was well-received and explored themes of domestic life and psychological intrigue, drawing comparisons to gothic romance writers. While her work has faced criticism for sentimentality, it also engages with social issues such as women's psychology and slavery, offering a more nuanced perspective than many of her peers. During the Civil War, Warfield expressed her views through poetry that supported the Confederacy. Overall, her literary contributions reflect both the cultural context of her time and her personal experiences.
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Catherine Ann Warfield
- Born: June 16, 1816
- Birthplace: Natchez, Mississippi
- Died: 1877
Biography
Poet and novelist Catherine Ann Warfield was born in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1816, the daughter of Nathaniel A. Ware, a lawyer, economist, and military major, and Sarah Percy Ellis. Both of her parents came from prominent Southern families and Warfield was born into a life of dignified privilege. She spent her earliest years in Mississippi, but after the birth of her sister Eleanor, her mother fell ill with depression and clinical insanity. Her father raised the girls in Philadelphia, where he could be closer to his wife’s family and could provide educational and cultural opportunities for his daughters. Eleanor was schooled in English and French, but Catherine refused this route and was tutored by a British governess and a socialite half-sister. Despite their diverse temperaments and interests, Warfield forged a strong relationship with her sister, one that she later stated was central to her happiness in life.
At age sixteen, she married Robert Elisha Warfield, who came from a wealthy Kentucky family. The Warfields lived first in Lexington, and then moved to Beechmore, a farm outside Louisville in 1857. The couple eventually had six children. Warfield and her sister Eleanor published two books of poetry together in the 1840’s. The Wife of Leon, and Other Poems by Two Sisters of the West appeared in 1843 to the praise of poet William Cullen Bryant, and the sisters dedicated their second volume of verse, The Indian Chamber, and Other Poems (1846), to Bryant. Despite Bryant’s praise when the books were published during the antebellum era, critics in subsequent eras have cited the stilted language and conventional sentimentality as significant flaws in the sisters’ verse.
Eleanor died in 1850, and Warfield’s father died four years later. Warfield published her first of several novels in 1860; The Household of Bouverie: Or, the Elixir of Gold, which she categorized as a domestic drama, was reviewed favorably by Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. The book is about an orphan who lives with her strange grandmother and discovers her grandfather is alive and conducting experiments in the attic. Warfield’s novels reveal the influence of Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Brönte, and other writers of gothic romance, a genre involving psychological intrigue, suspense (often violent), a needy heroine, and dark settings. Warfield’s novels, like her poetry, has been criticized for their sentimental style and unnatural language, but the books also have been praised for treating a few social issues, particularly the psychology of women, the institution of marriage, and the institution of slavery, with more complexity than was found in other novels of the period. During the Civil War, Warfield wrote poems in support of the Confederacy.