WILCOX, Ella (Wheeler), author, was born at Johnstown Centre, Wis., Nov. 5, 1853. Her parents removed from Vermont about 1850, her father being a music teacher. She was educated in the public schools of Windsor, Wis., and attended the Woman's College of the University of Wisconsin for one year (1868). Inheriting a studious and artistic temperament, she early evinced literary talent. She says, "I do not remember when I did not expect to be a writer, and I was a neighborhood celebrity at the age of eight." Several of her earliest articles appeared in the New York "Mercury," and she soon won the recognition of editors and publishers, both local and metropolitan, and contributed to the periodical press. She wrote largely for syndicates, and her verse contributed particularly to her fame and popularity. She was maried in 1884, to Robert M. Wilcox, of Meriden, Conn., and since 1887, she has resided in New York city, where she is engaged in literary work. She has published "Drops of Water: Temperance Poems" (1872); "Shells" (1873); "Maurine, and Other Poems" (1876; new ed., 1882); "Poems of Passion" (1883); "Mal Moulee," a novel (1885); "Perdita and Other Stories" (1886); "An Ambitious man" (1887); "Poems of Pleasure" (1888); "Adventures of Miss Volney" (1888); "A Double Life" (1890); "How Salvator Won" (1891); "Was it Suicide?" (1891); "Sweet Danger" (1892); "The Beautiful Land of Nod" (1892); "An Erring Woman's Love" (1892); "Men, Women and Emotions" (1893); "Custer, and Other Poems" (1895); "Three Women" (1898); "Poems of Power" (1901). The "Nation" wrote: "When Miss Wheeler writes simply and calmly, keeping on her own ground of life and experience, she is strong."

The National Cyclopedia of American Biography
Clifton, NJ: J.T.White, 1893-
v. 11, p. 278