A few weeks before she died she prepared an edition of poetry for publication, The LadyРІР‚в„ўs Book of Flowers and Poetry to Which Are Added, a Botanical Introduction, a Complete Floral Dictionary and a Chapter on Plants in Rooms this encyclopedia included her own poetry and prose as well as work by Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mary Russell Mitford, William Wordsworth, John Clare, Lord Byron, Bernard Barton, and other male and female British and American Romantic-era poets. In addition to magazine publication she published her prize-winning РІР‚СљEssay on Domestic HappinessРІР‚Сњ in 1840 as well as a volume of short fiction entitled Scenes from Real Life and Other American Tales. The family moved to Brooklyn, Long Island when Lucy was 15, and she began publishing poetry and prose under the initials РІР‚СљL.H.РІР‚Сњ in the New-Yorker and the Long-Island Star (where, coincidentally, her fellow Brooklyn poet and Blake admirer Walt Whitman worked as a compositor from 1832 to 1835).

Her father Joseph was a successful merchant who encouraged her education and writing she studied literature, history, botany, chemistry, Latin, French, and Spanish. Hooper was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts on February 4, 1816. This essay provides a little background on who Lucy Hooper was, on how she came to know about Blake, and how Blake aroused her poetic imagination to write РІР‚СљThe FairyРІР‚в„ўs Funeral,РІР‚Сњ a poem that rather audaciously turns Blake into her muse and offers an implicit critique of BlakeРІР‚в„ўs often violent representation of fairies and flowers. Hooper is one of a number of American poetesses whose work is still on the verge of rediscovery, and is interesting for more reasons than being inspired by Blake, but the fact that she was, that she was one of the handful of his near contemporaries who wrote a poem in response to himРІР‚вЂњand that she appears to be the first American to publish a poem in response to himРІР‚вЂњmakes her an intriguing figure. 6:6-14, E 53Р”В«lake might have been surprised to discover that one of the first Americans inspired by his voice to write РІР‚Сљa song of libertyРІР‚Сњ was the Romantic-era woman poet Lucy Hooper (1816-1841), whose 1833 poem РІР‚СљThe FairyРІР‚в„ўs FuneralРІР‚Сњ transforms the anecdote about BlakeРІР‚в„ўs witnessing a fairy funeral into a visionary lyric. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morningР”Р„nd the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night Р”Р‡or Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease. They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream. Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.Р”Р„nd let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing, Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air

Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:

Fairy chief laughing in the wind 2001