THE TEXT/TECH PAPERS

Rosalie W. Kercheval — Poems

8 November 1864, San Antonio, Texas – 21 September 1934, Los Angeles, California

Rosalie W. Kercheval grew up in the first generation of an American Los Angeles, the Texas-born daughter of poet, farmer, and 1849 overland migrant Albert Fenner Kercheval. At seventeen she was already publishing in the Los Angeles Herald; two years later A. L. Bancroft printed her own separately titled seventy-page sequence inside her father’s Dolores: And Other Poems. Its forty poems range from flowers, moonlight, memory, and the Southern California coast to Napoleon, Cleopatra, the Crusades, yellow fever, the San Juan Capistrano earthquake, and a captive tiger whose hunger for freedom overtakes the observer. A contemporary reviewer found less vigor than in her father’s poems but “much more finish, and equality of merit.” Kercheval continued to identify herself as a writer, shared a Los Angeles home with her sister Venia, and in 1919 protested the confinement of birds in tiny public cages. This edition restores all forty poems—not the four represented in an earlier project file—preserves the original order, lineation, stanzas, epigraphs, and authorial notes, and corrects only unmistakable typographical and OCR damage.

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Bibliography

Kercheval, Rosalie W. “Inspiration.” Los Angeles Herald, 24 Dec. 1881, p. 3.

———. “A Day Dream.” Commercial, before 1883. Direct issue not located; documented in the press notices bound into Dolores.

———. “Summer Time.” Horticulturist, June, before 1883. Direct issue and exact year not located; documented in the press notices bound into Dolores.

———. “Poems.” Dolores: And Other Poems, by Albert Fenner Kercheval and Rosalie W. Kercheval, A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1883, pp. 461–532. Forty poems.

———. Poems. The Text-Tech Papers, 2026.

———. Unidentified poem. Los Angeles Express, before 1883. Direct issue not located; documented in the press notices bound into Dolores.

———. Letter protesting the confinement of birds in tiny public cages. Los Angeles Times, before 24 Feb. 1919. Original letter not yet located; summarized in Rosamond Ewing’s response.

Works About the Author

“A Very Exquisite Little Poem.” Los Angeles Herald, 24 Dec. 1881, p. 3. Notice accompanying “Inspiration.”

“Dolores, and Other Poems.” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, vol. 3, no. 13, Jan. 1884, pp. 110–11. Contemporary review comparing Albert and Rosalie Kercheval and quoting “From the Past.”

Ewing, Rosamond. “Birds in Small Cages.” Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb. 1919, p. 10. Response supporting Kercheval’s protest.

James, George Wharton. The California Birthday Book. Arroyo Guild Press, 1909. Entry for November 8 identifies San Antonio as Kercheval’s birthplace and gives her literary record and address.

———. A Syllabus of California Literature. Southern California Academy of Sciences, 1914. Lists Albert and Rosalie Kercheval and identifies “Along the Shore.”

Los Angeles City Directory. Los Angeles Directory Co., 1916, p. 1154. Lists Rosalie W. and Venia A. Kercheval at 1749 North Alexandria Avenue.

Mighels, Ella Sterling. Literary California: Poetry, Prose and Portraits. Harr Wagner, 1918. Lists “Kercheval, Rosalie—Poems.”

Press notices for Rosalie W. Kercheval. Republican, Commercial, Los Angeles Express, and Los Angeles Herald, dates not supplied. Reprinted in Dolores: And Other Poems (1883), vi. Document early appearances of “A Day Dream,” “Summer Time,” “Inspiration,” and an unidentified poem.

Stefans, Brian Kim. “Rosalie W. Kercheval: Biography, Bibliography, and Research Dossier.” Extremes and Moderations, 2026.