When I was first assigned to recover what works I can by Elizabeth Graham, I barely recognized her name. I had the impression that she was one of the club’s most quiet published members. Most of what I’ve found confirms that she did, in fact, lead a quiet life.

Elizabeth Turner Graham was born in 1858 and died in 1920. She’s buried in the Friends Burial Ground, which also happens to be Baltimore’s oldest cemetery. Her burial site implies a connection with the Quakers, and much of her poetry reflects religious belief.

After all my sleuthing, I’ve only found two works that I know to be written by Graham: Buttercups and Daisies: Songs of a Summer, and Holly and Mistletoe: Songs Across the Snow. As the similar titles suggest, the two were intended to be companion volumes, and were published one year apart—in 1884 and 1885, respectively. Both of them are rare, but I was able to get my hands on them today in the Maryland Room of UMD’s Hornbake Library.

Both volumes of poetry are quite beautiful. My sense is that everything—from illustrations to binding—was done by Graham. The poetry seems to have been written for children. Graham writes about the unfolding summer—about elves, flowers, and songbirds. In Holly and Mistletoe, the imagery reverses, and she inflects her poetry with an overtly religious tone. Here’s a typical poem of hers, entitled “Fair Month of June:

The hills are white,
Oh, Summer-time!
With snowy Ox-eyed Daisies,
And Buttercups,
With dew filled up,
Her golden vase upraises.

The year moves on,
Oh, Summer-time!
Life’s joys are now the fleetest;
And ‘neath thy moon,
Fair month of June,
Are lover’s vows the sweetest.

There’s little remarkable about her poetry. But holding those volumes in my hands, and leafing through them, it was clear that both books were labors of love. The poems are singsongy, as children’s poetry should be; and the accompanying illustrations, also by Graham, brought them to life.

But, after the publication of these two books, it seems that her attentions went elsewhere. She organized Mt. Washington’s Lend-a-Hand Club—the first woman’s club in Maryland—and served as its president for at least twenty years. From what I’ve found of the club, its aims were more philanthropic than our own WLCB, but no less successful.

I might not have recognized Graham’s name from the minutes, but I did recognize the name of the Lend-a-Hand Club. The two publications of hers I’ve found are, in their own way, remarkable; but I think it’s likely that much of her literary aspiration was supplanted by activity in women’s clubs.