Shirley Frances Barker (April 4, 1911 – November 18, 1965)"Shirley Frances Barker." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale ''Biography In Context''. Web. 14 Feb. 2013. was an American writer, poet, and librarian.

Biography

Barker was born in

Farmington, New Hampshire Farmington is a town in Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 6,722 at the 2020 census. Farmington is home to Blue Job State Forest, the Tebbetts Hill Reservation, and Baxter Lake. The town center, where 3,824 peop ...

. She attended the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire, United States. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant coll ...

, graduating with a

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

in 1934 as a member of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

. While still an undergraduate, she won the

Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the Uni ...

with her poetry collection ''The Dark Hills Under'' (1933). It was published with a foreword by

Stephen Vincent Benét Stephen Vincent Benét ( ; July 22, 1898 – March 13, 1943) was an American poet, short story writer, and novelist. He wrote a book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, '' John Brown's Body'', published in 1928, for which he receive ...

and was well reviewed. One of the judges had detected some literary affinities between her work and that of

Robert Frost Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American Colloquialism, colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New E ...

, so UNH President Edward M. Lewis asked Barker to send a copy of the collection to Frost, Lewis' friend and correspondent. Frost was enraged by what he perceived as anti-

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...

and anti-theistic sentiments in Barker's poetry and bizarrely insisted that Barker was the illegitimate descendant of a person described in her poem "Portrait". In what his biographer described as "a characteristic act of poetic retaliation", Frost penned the ribald poem "Pride of Ancestry" and the religious poem "Not All There". He did not tell Lewis of his objections to Barker's work and there is no record that there was any correspondence between Frost and Barker. Barker did not publish another book for sixteen years. She graduated with an A.M. in English from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...

in 1938 and a degree in

library science Library and information science (LIS)Library and Information Sciences is the name used in the Dewey Decimal Classification for class 20 from the 18th edition (1971) to the 22nd edition (2003). are two interconnected disciplines that deal with info ...

from the

Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science Pratt Institute School of Information is the information school of the Pratt Institute, a private university in New York City. The school administers the oldest Library and Information Science program in North America. It was created in Brooklyn, ...

in 1941. Beginning in 1940, she worked as a librarian at the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

, primarily in the American history section. In 1949, she published her debut novel, ''Peace My Daughters'', about the

Salem witch trials The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in Province of Massachusetts Bay, colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Not everyone wh ...

, which she believed her ancestors had attended. She wrote a series of successful formula historical novels, most of them set in her native

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

and some with supernatural elements. Two of her novels, ''Rivers Parting'' (1952) and ''Swear by Apollo'' (1959), were

Literary Guild The Literary Guild of America is a mail order book sales club, book club selling low-cost editions of selected current books to its members. Established in 1927 to compete with the Book of the Month Club, it is currently owned by Bookspan. It was a ...

selections. The success of these novels enabled her to leave the New York Public Library in 1953 and she moved to

Concord, New Hampshire Concord () is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Hampshire and the county seat, seat of Merrimack County, New Hampshire, Merrimack County. As of the 2020 United States census the population was 43,976, making it the List of municipalities ...

. Barker was found inside a car in her garage in

Penacook, New Hampshire Penacook, originally called "Fisherville", is a village within the city of Concord in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, United States. It lies along Concord's northern border with Boscawen. The name comes from the Pennacook tribe that lived in ...

, dead of

carbon monoxide poisoning Carbon monoxide poisoning typically occurs from breathing in carbon monoxide (CO) at excessive levels. Symptoms are often described as " flu-like" and commonly include headache, dizziness, weakness, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion. Large ...

. The car windows were up and the gas tank was empty. Her death was ruled a suicide. When Frost biographer Lawrance Thompson attempted to access her papers, he was told by her

executor An executor is someone who is responsible for executing, or following through on, an assigned task or duty. The feminine form, executrix, is sometimes used. Executor of will An executor is a legal term referring to a person named by the maker o ...

that they all "had disappeared under mysterious circumstances". However, typescripts, galleys, and plate proofs of the novels ''Liza Bowe'', ''Swear by Apollo'', and ''The Last Gentleman'' are in the University of New Hampshire Library.

Selected works

*
The Dark Hills Under
' (poems),

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...

(New Haven, CT), 1933. *
Peace, My Daughters
', Crown (New York, NY), 1949. *
Rivers Parting
', Crown, 1950. *
A Land and a People
' (poems), Crown, 1952. *
Fire and Hammer
', Crown, 1953. * ''Tomorrow the New Moon'', Bobbs (New York, NY), 1955. * ''Liza Bowe'', Random (New York, NY), 1956. *
Swear by Apollo
', Random, 1958. * ''The Trojan Horse'', Random, 1959. *
The Last Gentleman
', Random, 1960. * ''Corner of the Moon'', Crown, 1961. * ''The Road to Bunker Hill'', Duell, Sloan & Pearce (New York, NY), 1962. * ''Strange Wives'', Crown, 1963.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Barker, Shirley Frances 1911 births 1965 deaths 1965 suicides 20th-century American poets 20th-century American novelists American women poets American women novelists Librarians from New Hampshire American women librarians New York Public Library people People from Concord, New Hampshire Pratt Institute alumni Radcliffe College alumni Suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning Suicides in New Hampshire University of New Hampshire alumni Novelists from New Hampshire Yale Younger Poets winners 20th-century American women writers People from Farmington, New Hampshire