Sara Jane Lippincott

Sara Jane Lippincott
Sara Jane Lippincott ("Grace Greenwood"), circa 1850
Born	September 23, 1823 Pompey, New York
Died	April 20, 1904 (aged 81) New Rochelle New York
Pen name	Grace Greenwood
Occupation	journalist, novelist, poet
Nationality	American
Genre	journalism, fiction, poetry, children's literature
Subject	women's rights, abolition
Spouse	Leander K. Lippincott
Children	Annie Grace

Sara Jane Lippincott (1823–1904) was better known by the pseudonym Grace Greenwood. She was an American author, poet, and lecturer. One of the first women to gain access into the Congressional press galleries, she used her questions to advocate for social reform and women's rights.

Sara Jane Clarke was born on September 23, 1823, at Pompey, New York to parents Deborah Baker Clarke (c. 1791–1881) and Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke (1770–1854). Her family moved to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, where her father practiced as a physician. There she attended the Greenwood Institute, a ladies' academy, from which she may have taken her pseudonym. On October 17, 1853, she married Leander K. Lippincott, and they had a daughter, Annie Grace, born October 3, 1855.

Grace Greenwood's earliest writing was poetry and children's stories, which she published in local papers. In 1844, she drew national attention, at age 21, with a poem published in the New York Mirror. She wrote under both her given name and her pseudonym. In the February 14, 1846 issue of the Home Journal, The Wife's Appeal, a poem by Miss Sara J. Clarke, is published just above Tit-for-Tat, a story by Grace Greenwood. Her work was published frequently in the widely read magazines of the day. Her poetry received significant critical attention. She became a prominent member of the literary society of New York along with Anne Lynch Botta, Edgar Allan Poe, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Horace Greeley, Richard Henry Stoddard, Andrew Carnegie, Mary Mapes Dodge, Julia Ward Howe, Charles Butler, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Delia Bacon, and Bayard Taylor, among others. By October 1849, Godey's Lady's Book listed her as an assistant editor and she was also editor of Godey's Dollar Newspaper.