ABSTRACT
Eliza Cook (1818–1889) was a self-educated writer and poet who at the age of seventeen published her first poetry collection, Lays of a Wild Harp: A Collection of Metrical Pieces (John Bennett, 1835). Her hugely popular poem, ‘The Old Armchair’ (1838), promoted her in both England and America. The poem describes an ideal mother who has passed away but left valued memories behind in the ‘old armchair’. In the same year she published her second collection, Melaia and Other Poems. Cook also published poems in magazines such as Metropolitan Magazine, New Monthly Magazine, and Weekly Dispatch.
