Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (1811–1850)

Frances "Fanny" Osgood, née Locke, was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Joseph Locke, a wealthy merchant, and his second wife, Mary Ingersoll Foster. She was educated mostly at home, and also attended the prestigious Boston Lyceum for Young Ladies. Her parents encouraged her to write, as did her older half-sister Anna Maria Foster Wells and brother A.A. (Andrew Aitchison) Locke, both of whom became writers. Fanny publishing her first poems at age 14 in the new children's monthly, Juvenile Miscellany, edited by Lydia Maria Child. In 1835, Fanny married Samuel Stillman Osgood, a portrait artist, and moved with him to England, where their first daughter was born. While in England in 1838, she published her first collections of poems, A Wreath of Flowers from New England and The Casket of Fate.

After her father's death in 1839, Fanny and her family returned to Boston where their second daughter was born, and then moved to New York City. Fanny moved in literary circles and became one of the most popular women writers of her time. Many of her works were published in the popular literary magazines of the time, sometimes under the pseudonyms "Kate Carol" or "Violet Vane." Collections published included The Poetry of Flowers and the Flowers of Poetry (1841), The Snowdrop, a New Year Gift for Children (1842), Rose, Sketches in Verse (1842), Puss in Boots (1842), The Marquis of Carabas (1844) and Cries in New York (1846). She was also famous for her exchange of romantic poems with Edgar Allan Poe.