Grace Atherton Dennen — Recovered Poems

September 28, 1874, Woburn, Massachusetts–June 9, 1927, Pasadena, California

Grace Atherton Dennen helped build the literary life in which her own poems appeared. For thirty-four years she taught at the Girls’ Collegiate School; she also worked through the Ebell Club, edited The Ebell, and in 1921 founded The Lyric West, giving western poets a sustained forum that did not depend on eastern approval. Her surviving poems are remarkably various. “By the Sea” moves through suicidal crisis toward a return to life; “Moonlight on the Terrace” stages desire, coercion, honor, and renunciation as a dramatic monologue; later poems address suffrage, Pacific harbors, agricultural labor, scientific nightmare, music, faith, and mortality. Dennen’s obituary credited her with hundreds of poems, but the record remains scattered. Recovered Poems gathers every complete text currently located and reveals a writer whose classrooms, clubs, editorial offices, and imaginative life continually fed one another.

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Catalogue

Poetry Clubs & Civic Culture

Associations

Editors and Magazines Poetry and Civic Clubs Teaching and Mentorship The Lyric West Women Who Built the Scene

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Bibliography

Dennen, Grace Atherton. “By the Sea.” The Ebell, Oct. 1898. Dramatic poem; reset from the complete page images.

———. “Moonlight on the Terrace.” The Ebell, Jan. 1899. Dramatic monologue; reset from the complete twelve-page witness.

———. “Gold-of-Ophir Roses.” The Ebell, 1899; reprinted in Golden Songs of the Golden State, 1917.

———. “The Feast of San Juan.” The Ebell, 1899. Fiction serialized in two parts.

———. “Hard Luck Pete.” Boys’ Life, vol. 1, 1911. Fiction.

———. The Dawn Meadow. Richard G. Badger / Gorham Press, 1911. Novel.

———. “Home-Products Day.” The Youth’s Companion, 23 Dec. 1920.

———. “A Song of Three Harbors.” The Lyric West, Apr. 1921.

———. “The Widow Barker Votes.” The Lyric West, May 1921.

———. “The New House and the Old.” The Lyric West, May 1921.

———. “Moments: Winding the Clock.” The Lyric West, July–Aug. 1921.

———. “The Awakening.” The Lyric West, July–Aug. 1921.

———. “Pastels.” The Lyric West, Oct. 1921.

———. “The Frost.” The Lyric West, Jan. 1922.

———. “April Magic.” The Lyric West, Apr. 1922.

———. “The Riding of Peaceful Henry.” The Lyric West, Aug. 1922; reprinted in Braithwaite’s anthology for 1923.

———. “The End of the Feud.” The Lyric West, Jan. 1923.

———. “I Hope That I Remember.” The Lyric West, Jan. 1923.

———. “Beginnings.” The Lyric West, Jan. 1924.

———. “The Bee Ranch.” Second Anthology of Verse. Date and first venue require further verification.

———. “The Coming of Dawn.” The Lyric West. Reprinted in The Nature Lover’s Knapsack, edited by Edwin Osgood Grover, 1927.

———. “Spring in the Westland.” Online text witness; original print venue untraced.

Works About the Author

Braithwaite, William Stanley, editor. Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1923. Small, Maynard & Company, 1923, pp. 87–90. Includes “The Riding of Peaceful Henry.”

Ebell Club of Los Angeles. “Programs, Officer and Committee Lists, and Journal Records, 1898–1899.” Ebell Club of Los Angeles records.

Grover, Edwin Osgood, editor. The Nature Lover’s Knapsack. Rand McNally, 1927. Public-domain full text.

Leonard, John William, editor. “Grace Atherton Dennen.” Woman’s Who’s Who of America, 1914–1915. Self-reported birth date, education, work, politics, memberships, and recreations.

“Miss Dennen, Poet, Teacher, Dies.” Los Angeles Times, 10 June 1927, p. 19. Principal near-contemporary obituary; saved clipping.

Poetry Foundation / Poetry. 1924 notice of the suspension of The Lyric West and assessment of its western editorial role.

Smith College. Catalogues and alumnae publications. A.B. class of 1892, Radcliffe study, A.M. date conflict, and promotion of The Lyric West.

Smith, Jessie Carney. American Women Playwrights, 1900–1930: A Checklist. Reference entry requiring further title-level investigation.

United States Census Bureau. “Dennen Household, Los Angeles.” 1910 United States Census, 1910. Census record documenting marital status and occupation.

Who’s Who in the Pacific Southwest. Entries for Grace Atherton Dennen. Career, Stanford study and teaching, lectures, publications, and the conflicting 1873 birth year.