Introduction

Biography

Rebecca was the daugh­ter of Pro­fes­sor N. R. Smith, a play­wright and au­thor­i­ty on Shakes­peare. She mar­ried twice: to Ol­iv­er I. Tay­lor (1856) and James Poll­ard (1863).

A teach­er, writ­er and po­et, she spent her most pro­duc­tive years in Io­wa. She was the ano­ny­mous au­thor of Em­ma Bart­lett, or Pre­ju­dice and Fa­na­ti­ci­sm, a fic­tion­al re­ply to Uncle Tom’s Ca­bin, in­tend­ed to ex­pose the hy­po­cr­isy of Know-Nothing­ism.

Pollard’s fa­mi­ly moved to Ohio, then Ken­tuc­ky, where she worked as a teach­er. Lat­er, she taught in Chi­ca­go, Il­li­nois.

She lived in va­ri­ous Io­wa ci­ties, in­clud­ing Farm­ing­ton, Keo­sau­qua, Bur­ling­ton, Ft. Ma­di­son and Ke­o­kuk.

Works

She be­gan her writ­ing ca­reer with the Lou­is­ville Jour­nal, whose ed­it­or op­posed se­ces­sion and was an im­port­ant in­flu­ence in keep­ing Kentuc­ky in the Un­ion.

In her Let­ters from a Prair­ie Cot­tage, Pol­lard in­clud­ed a child­ren’s cor­ner with tales about tam­ing and rais­ing an­i­mals and of a cat who adopt­ed or­phan chicks. She al­so wrote child­ren’s books, in­clud­ing a prim­er and a spell­er.

Pollard’s work in the field of read­ing rep­re­sent­ed a pio­neer ef­fort to cre­ate a se­quen­tial read­ing pro­gram of in­ten­sive synt­he­tic phon­ics, created, comp­lete with a sep­a­rate teach­er’s man­u­al and spell­ing and read­ing books, and mov­ing in­to a broad based grad­ed ser­ies of li­te­ra­ture read­ers.

Her ser­ies is im­port­ant for its high cor­re­la­tion of spell­ing and read­ing in­struc­tion, for its con­cern for the in­ter­ests of child­ren, for its in­cor­po­ra­tion of mu­sic in­to the pro­cess of learn­ing to read, and as the fore­run­ner for oth­er phon­ics sys­tems. Her read­ers were used in ev­ery state in Am­er­ica, and were used in Ke­o­kuk, Io­wa, as late as 1937. Few wo­men have sin­gle-hand­ed­ly con­trib­ut­ed so much to the field of read­ing.

In 1869, Poll­ard pub­lished a book of po­ems titled May­mie, as a trib­ute to her ten year old daugh­ter who died that year. She fol­lowed up the next year with In Me­mo­ri­am, May­mie, Ap­ril 6th, 1869, a med­i­ta­tion on death and suf­fer­ing.

Em­ma Bart­lett re­ceived mixed re­views when it was pub­lished in 1856. The Ohio States­man gave a ve­ry good re­view, but the Cin­cin­na­ti Times said, We have read this book. We pro­nounce the plot an ex­cel­lent one and the style charm­ing, but she has failed to ful­fill the in­tend­ed mis­sion of the book. It ac­cused her of al­so show­ing pre­ju­dice and fa­na­ti­cism ty­pi­cal of the pol­i­ti­cians she tried to de­fend.

In 1876, she pub­lished Cen­ten­ni­al, and Oth­er Po­ems to com­mem­o­rate the 100th an­ni­ver­sa­ry of the Am­er­ican De­cla­ra­tion of In­de­pen­dence, and the Cen­ten­nial Ex­po­si­tion in Phi­la­del­phia, Penn­syl­van­ia, the first of­fi­cial World’s Fair held in the Unit­ed States. The vol­ume in­clud­ed ma­ny po­ems about Io­wa, se­lect­ed po­ems of Pol­lard’s fa­ther, and il­lus­tra­tions of the Cen­ten­nial grounds in Phi­la­del­phia.

Pollard was 79 years old when she pro­duced the po­em, Al­thea or Morn­ing Gl­ory, which re­lates to Io­wa.