Sappho, b. 615, d. 570 BCE
Sappho was born in 615 BCE on the Greek Island of Lesbos of an aristocratic family. Known as a teacher and a poet, she ran an academy for young women and her poems were collected into nine volumes around the third century, BC. Her work was almost lost entirely for years. In 1898, scholars unearthed papyri, containing fragments of her poems. In 1914, archaeologists discovered paper-mache coffins made from scraps of paper that contained Sapphos verse fragments. Sappho has long been considered to be one of the greatest lyric poets from any age.
Anne Bradstreet, b. 1612, d. 1672
Anne Bradstreet was born in Northampton, England, in 1612. She married Simon Bradstreet and the couple had eight children. Bradstreet was the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet. She wrote a volume of poetry which was first published in London in 1650 titled "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America". Bradstreet and her family arrived in America in 1630 after a difficult three-month crossing on the ship Arabella, which then docked in Salem, Massachusetts. Anne Bradstreet died in 1672.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, b. 1860, d. 1935
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 3, 1860, and she became a social activist during the late 1800s to the early 1900s.She married James Stetson in 1884, resulting in the birth of one daughter. During that marriage, Gilman went into a severe depression, which resulted her writing "The Yellow Wallpapger", a highly acclaimed short story, in 1892. In 1900, she married her first cousin George Gilman and established "The Forerunner", a platform for her views on feminism and social reform, which ran from 1909 to 1916. Gilman was also the author of "Herland" and "Women and Economics". She died on August 17, 1935, of an apparent suicide.