49 Facts About Ina Coolbrith

Ina Coolbrith, born the niece of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founder Joseph Smith, left the Mormon community as a child to enter her teens in Los Angeles, California, where she began to publish poetry.

Ina Coolbrith's terminated a youthful failed marriage to make her home in San Francisco, and met writers Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard with whom she formed the "Golden Gate Trinity" closely associated with the literary journal Overland Monthly.

Ina Coolbrith's held literary salons at her home in Russian Hill—in this way she introduced new writers to publishers.

Ina Coolbrith befriended the poet Joaquin Miller and helped him gain global fame.

Ina Coolbrith's moved back to San Francisco and was invited by members of the Bohemian Club to be their librarian.

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Ina Coolbrith began to write a history of California literature, including much autobiographical material, but the fire following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake consumed her work.

Ina Coolbrith's traveled by train to New York City several times and, with fewer worldly cares, greatly increased her poetry output.

Ina Coolbrith was born Josephine Donna Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois, the last of three daughters of Agnes Moulton Coolbrith and Don Carlos Smith, brother to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

Ina Coolbrith's father died of malarial fever four months after her birth, and a sister died one month after that; Ina Coolbrith's mother then married Joseph Smith, in 1842, becoming his sixth or seventh wife.

In 1862, Ina Coolbrith moved with her mother, stepfather and twin half-brothers to San Francisco to ward off depression.

Ina Coolbrith soon met Bret Harte and Samuel Langhorne Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, in San Francisco.

Ina Coolbrith's published poems in the Californian, a new literary newspaper formed in 1864 and edited by Harte and Charles Henry Webb.

In July 1868, Ina Coolbrith supplied a poem, "Longing", for the first issue of the Overland Monthly, and served unofficially as co-editor with Harte in selecting poems, articles and stories for the periodical.

Ina Coolbrith's became a friend of actress and poet Adah Menken, adding to Menken's credibility as an intellectual, but was unable to impress Harte of Menken's worth.

Stoddard once said that Ina Coolbrith never had any of her literary submissions returned from a publisher.

Ina Coolbrith met writer and critic Ambrose Bierce in 1869, and by 1871 when he was courting Mary Ellen Day, Bierce organized friendly card games between himself, Day, Ina Coolbrith and Stoddard.

In mid-1870, Ina Coolbrith met the eccentric poet Cincinnatus Hiner Miller, newly divorced from his second wife, and introduced him to the San Francisco literary circle at the suggestion of Stoddard.

When Ina Coolbrith discovered that Miller was enamored of the heroic, tragic life of the legendary Californio outlaw Joaquin Murrieta, she suggested that Miller take the name Joaquin Miller as his pen name, and that he dress the part with longer hair and a more recognizably mountain man-style costume.

Ina Coolbrith then helped Miller prepare for his upcoming trip to England, where he would lay a laurel wreath on the tomb of Lord Byron, a poet they both greatly admired.

Ina Coolbrith wrote "With a Wreath of Laurel" about this enterprise.

Ina Coolbrith had hoped to tour the East Coast and Europe with Miller, but stayed behind in San Francisco because she felt obliged to care for her mother and her seriously ill, widowed sister Agnes who was unable to care for herself or for her two children.

Ina Coolbrith moved to Oakland to set up a larger household for her extended family.

Ina Coolbrith wrote "Beside the Dead" in grief from the loss of her sister.

Ina Coolbrith earned a salary of $80 per month, much less than a man would have received.

Ina Coolbrith's published only sporadically over the next 19 years—working as Oakland's librarian was the low point of her poetic career.

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Ina Coolbrith mentored young Isadora Duncan, who later described Ina Coolbrith as "a very wonderful" woman, with "very beautiful eyes that glowed with burning fire and passion".

Magazine writer Samuel Dickson reported that, at a soiree in 1927, an aging Ina Coolbrith told him of the famous lovers she had known, and that she had once dazzled Joseph Duncan, Isadora's father.

Ina Coolbrith said that his attentions led to the breakup of his marriage.

Duncan wrote in her autobiography that, as a librarian, Ina Coolbrith was always pleased with the youthful dancer's book choices, and that Duncan did not find out until later that Ina Coolbrith was "evidently the great passion of [Joseph Duncan's] life".

In 1881, Ina Coolbrith's poetry was published in book form, entitled A Perfect Day, and Other Poems.

Ina Coolbrith's helped writers such as Gelett Burgess and Laura Redden Searing gain wider notice.

Ina Coolbrith wrote that the periodical she worked for should be named the Warmed-Overland Monthly because it delivered nothing new.

In September 1892, Ina Coolbrith was given three days' notice to clear her desk, to be replaced as librarian by her nephew Henry Frank Peterson.

Ina Coolbrith made such an offering in late 1894, accompanied by a suggestion for a new career which he thought would keep her in the area: she could fill the position of San Francisco's librarian, recently vacated by John Vance Cheney.

Ina Coolbrith sent a response to Muir, thanking him for "the fruit of your land, and the fruit of your brain".

In 1894, Ina Coolbrith honored poet Celia Thaxter with a memorial poem entitled "The Singer of the Sea".

Thaxter had been to the Atlantic Monthly what Ina Coolbrith was to the Overland Monthly: its "lady poet" who submitted verse containing "local color".

Ina Coolbrith's was often sick in bed with rheumatism, and hard-pressed to continue her work at the Bohemian Club.

Directly after the earthquake but before fire threatened, Ina Coolbrith had left her house carrying a pet cat, thinking she would soon return.

Immediately after he spotted heavy smoke from across the bay, Joaquin Miller took the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco in order to assist Ina Coolbrith in saving her valuables from the approaching fire, but was prevented from doing so by soldiers who had orders to use deadly force against looters.

Ina Coolbrith never resumed the work of writing the history, as she was unable to balance its revelatory autobiographical truth with the scandal that would then ensue.

Ina Coolbrith spent a few years in temporary residences while friends rallied to raise money to build a house for her.

In 1911, Ina Coolbrith accepted the presidency of the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Association, and a park was dedicated to her, at 1715 Taylor Street, one block from her pre-earthquake home.

Ina Coolbrith was named honorary member of the California Writers Club around 1913, a group that eventually grew into a state-wide organization.

In 1916, Coolbrith sent copies of her poetry collections to her cousin Joseph F Smith who publicized her sending them to him and her identity as a niece of Joseph Smith, which upset her.

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Crippled with arthritis, Ina Coolbrith was brought back to California where she settled in Berkeley to be cared for by her niece.

Adams made a photographic portrait of Ina Coolbrith seated near one of her white Persian cats and wearing a large white mantilla on her head.

Near her Russian Hill home, Ina Coolbrith Park, established earlier as a series of terraces ascending a steep hill, received a memorial plaque placed in 1947 by the San Francisco parlors of the Native Daughters of the Golden West.

Ina Coolbrith takes Dorita under her wing, introducing the precocious teenager to her literary friends, most importantly poet Joaquin Miller .