Woman of the Century/Emelie T. Y. Swett Parkhurst

PARKHURST, Mrs. Emelie Tracy Y. Swett, poet and author, born in San Francisco, Cal., 9th March, 1863, and died there 21st April, 1892. She was the daughter of Professor John Swett, a prominent educator of California, known as "The father of Pacific Coast Education" and the author of many excellent educational works, which have been in wide use in the United States, England, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Australia. Both Professor Swett and his wife were inclined to literature. EMELIE TRACY Y. SWETT PARKHURST. Emelie was educated in the public schools of San Francisco, ending with the normal school. She made specialties of French and music and was proficient in art and designing. She went, after graduation, to Europe and spent some time in France. Returning to California, she taught vocal and instrumental music in a female seminary in Eureka. She became the wife of John W. Parkhurst, of the Bank of California, in 1889. Her literary career was begun in her youth, when she wrote a prize Christmas story for the San Francisco "Chronicle." She was then fourteen years old. She served for a time as private secretary to a San Francisco publisher, and while in that position she wrote and published much in prose and verse. She contributed to eastern papers, to the San Francisco papers and to the "Overland Magazine." She collected materials for a book on the best literary work of the Pacific coast. Soon after her marriage she organized the Pacific Coast Literary Bureau, and out of it grew the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Association, and she served as corresponding secretary of the latter organization. She contributed to the "Magazine of Poetry," the "California Illustrated Magazine" and many other high-class periodicals. She wrote much in the editorial line, and her literary work includes everything from Creek, French and German translations to the production of finished poems of high merit. She wrote a biography of Charles Edward de Villers in French and English. She dramatized Helen Hunt Jackson's Indian novel, "Ramona." Her life was crowded full of work.