Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/214

 ANNA P. DINNIES. Anna Petre Dinnies, whose name deservedly stands in the front rank of our Western female poets, both in point of time and excellence, is a daughter of Judge Shackleford of South Carolina, in which State she was born. No pains were spared in her early training, and she completed her education at a Seminary of high grade in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, under the care of David Ramsey, the histo- rian. At an early age she gave indications of that literary ability which has since been so amply realized. In 1826 she became engaged in a literary correspondence with John C. Dinnies, of St. Louis, Missouri. This exchange of views on matters of literature and taste ripened into mutual affection, and resulted in a matrimonial engagement, although the parties met for the first time only one week before their marriage. That this roman- tic marriage, contrary to the usual course of such, has yielded a happy life, no one can question who is acquainted with her poems — they are inspired not only by affec- tion, but unalloyed happiness also. Upon her mai'riage, Mrs. Dinnies came to the West to reside with her husband in St. Louis, but for some years past her home has been in New Orleans. Mrs. Dinnies's poetical career has been almost entirely identified with the West. Her earlier poems were made the common property of her adopted home, by being extensively copied in the newspapers throughout the West and South, They were published in the Illinois Monthly, over the signature of Moina, and gained the author a reputation entirely on their own merits. Li 1846, she published an illustrated volume entitled "The Floral Year." It contains one hundred poems arranged in twelve groups — twelve bouquets of flowers gathered in the different months of the year. Since the publication of this volume we have had but little from her pen, nor are we informed whether she is now engaged in any literary labors. Mrs. Dinnies's writings are not marked by that exuberance of fancy and ornament which is often the chief characteristic and charm of her sex, but they are so full of pure home feeling and tenderness that we prize them much more than if they were mere products of the intellect. Her finest poems are those in which she portrays the domestic affections. She never fails in a delicacy of sentiment and feeling, which justly entitles her to a place among the most elegant poets in our country. In the Hesperian for April, 1839, William D. Gallagher, of her poems "Wedded Love" and "The Wife," said: They gushed warm and glowing from the human heart — a deep which calleth unto the deep of another century as well as to that of its own day — and they are as green and beautiful and touch- ing now, as when they first spariiled in the light — nay, more so, for that which cometh of the True riivcals itself fully only in the lapse of time ( 198)