Elizabeth Oakes Smith

by

Caroline M. Woidat

• LAST MODIFIED: 17 April 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0257

Introduction

Elizabeth Oakes Prince Smith (b. 1806–d. 1893), born near North Yarmouth, Maine, drew literary inspiration from the region’s landscape, cultures, and histories. At sixteen she married Seba Smith, an author roughly twice her age. She began contributing to a Portland periodical he edited while caring for a large household. The shift from girlhood’s promise to women’s realities is a recurring theme in her work. Changing pen names reflect the evolution of her identities as author and activist. From early anonymous contributions signed “E,” she went on to publish as Mrs. Seba Smith, use the pseudonym Ernest Helfenstein, and claim authorship in her own right as Elizabeth (or E.) Oakes Smith. She published her first novel Riches Without Wings (1838) in response to the Panic of 1837 that led to her family’s financial losses, relocation to Charleston, South Carolina, and resettlement in New York. Forming new literary connections, she published prolifically in journals and first earned wide recognition for her poem “The Sinless Child” (1842), followed by The Sinless Child and Other Poems (1843) and The Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1845). Oakes Smith gained renown for work in diverse genres including short stories, novels, plays, women’s rights essays and convention speeches, lyceum lectures, nature writing, children’s literature, gift books, sketches, and spiritual literature. Among various contributions to the feminist movement, she wrote an influential series of newspaper articles republished in Woman and Her Needs (1851). Oakes Smith’s activism was informed by Transcendentalist and spiritualist ideals expressed in such works as Bertha and Lily (1854) and Shadow Land; or The Seer (1852). A celebrated outdoorswoman, she published accounts of hiking in Maine along with fiction and poetry depicting women’s relationships to nature. Her ongoing engagement with Native American themes is evident in The Western Captive (1842), The Sagamore of Saco (1868), and various other works. Oakes Smith wrote about interlocking systemic injustices, critically examining gender inequality, slavery, dispossession of Native lands, capital punishment, racial violence, and economic disparities. The Newsboy (1854) calls attention to child labor, working poverty, housing insecurity, and injustices in the prison system. Oakes Smith’s experiences of the Civil War and Reconstruction coincided with family difficulties, deaths, and financial instability. She served in 1877 as pastor of the Independent Church of Canastota, New York, continuing to write and lecture late in life. Oakes Smith died in 1893 leaving unpublished manuscripts of great interest to scholars recovering her work and legacy.

General Overviews

Scherman 2023 offers an excellent overview of the complexities of Oakes Smith’s legacy, engaging issues that have complicated the development of full-length comprehensive studies. Nichols and Scherman 1994 and Jaroff 2007 both provide good biographical perspectives of Oakes Smith’s career that connect her work to important contexts in which it was produced. The pairing of Elizabeth Oakes and Seba Smith’s biographies in Wyman 1927 has been questioned for its critical value, but the text is of interest for its role in textuary recovery and for its detailed bibliographies. Richards 1981 provides a biography of Oakes Smith and a review of her works.

• Jaroff, Rebecca. “‘I Almost Danced Over My Freedom’: Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Liberation from the Literary Marketplace.” In Popular Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Literary Marketplace. Edited by Earl Yarington and Mary De Jong, 172–188. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2007.

  Locates Oakes Smith’s development as a writer and an advocate of women’s rights in biographical and cultural contexts, tracing her navigation of society’s gender norms throughout stages of her life and career.

• Nichols, Cameron, and Timothy H. Scherman. “Elizabeth Oakes Smith: The Puritan Feminist.” In Femmes de conscience: Aspects du féminisme américain (1848–1875). Edited by Susan Goodman and Daniel Royot, 109–126. Paris: Presses de las Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1994.

  DOI: 10.4000/books.psn.4731

  A biographical portrait of Oakes Smith that examines the trajectory of her feminist thought, political activism, and literary career. Traces Oakes Smith’s spiritual and intellectual growth from childhood to the end of her life, in relation to ideological tensions and social change in 19th-century America.

• Richards, Wynola L. “A Review of the Life and Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Feminist, Author, and Lecturer, 1806–1893.” PhD diss., Ball State University, 1981.

  An introduction to Oakes Smith’s life and work, of interest as an early project in scholarly recovery of her legacy. Presents a three-chapter biography constructed from manuscript sources, followed by chapters on six topics: The Sinless Child, Bertha and Lily, The Newsboy, “Feminist Writings,” “Minor Writings,” and “Reminiscences.” Emphasizes Oakes Smith’s importance as a progressive, independent thinker and women’s rights advocate over the value of her writings to literary studies.

• Scherman, Timothy H. “General Introduction.” In Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Selected Writings, Vol. I: Emergence and Fame, 1831–1849. Edited by Timothy H. Scherman, xix–xxvii. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2023.

  A concise introduction to Oakes Smith’s life, writings, and critical reception. Discusses interpretive approaches and challenges to recovery of Oakes Smith’s work in general, useful to all readers. Concludes with an overview of the scholarly edition’s organization, selection, and editorial methodology in a three-volume series collecting selected works by Oakes Smith. Reprinted in Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Selected Writings, Vol. II, Feminist Journalism and Public Activism, 1850–1854. Edited by Timothy Scherman, xix-xxvii. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2024.

• Wyman, Mary Alice. Two American Pioneers: Seba Smith and Elizabeth Oakes Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 1927.

  Combines biographies and bibliographies of the two writers because of their link through marriage, providing a dated critical perspective and introduction to Oakes Smith’s life and works. Useful as a research aid for its detailed references to published works, manuscripts, and correspondence. Includes bibliography entries organized by author, journal titles, and year published.