Biography
A resident of Boston until her marriage in 1819 to Dr. Samuel Gilman, a Unitarian minister in Charleston, SC. She began publishing poetry in the North American Review in 1817. Her marriage and seven children interrupted her early career, but as the country moved toward war, she returned to her literary interests. Divided between loyalty to her region of birth and to her adopted southern alliances, she argued against regional divisions on the basis that both regions shared similar sentiments. But when war broke out, she aligned herself with the South, and worked with the Greenville Ladies' Association in Aid of the Volunteers of the Confederate Army. Howard Gilman edited The Southern Rose, a literary gazette, for seven years, and published several books, sometimes using the pen-name "Clarissa Packard": Recollections of a New-England Housekeeper (1834); Recollections of a Southern Matron (1838), an almanac for women; Tales and Ballads (1839), short fiction and poems; Love's Progress (1840), a romance; Stories and Poems for Children (1850); Oracles from the Poets (1844); etc. Her daughter, Caroline Howard, became a well-known writer as well.
--Sharon M. HarrisResidence
Massachusetts and South Carolina
Writings
Various
Poems
Papers
Bibliography