Anne Charlotte (Lynch) Botta (11 November 1815-23 March 1891) was an author and literary hostess who was more effective and more memorable as the latter than as the former. Despite the ephemeral nature of the literary salon, it was as its moving spirit that she achieved her major success rather than as poet and prose writer. Indeed in 1883, when she was in her sixties, the editor Edmund Clarence Stedman, mindful of her role as literary salon leader, wrote to her: "I want you, at once ... to begin upon your Memoirs and Reminiscences. No person in America can write so interesting and lasting a book, of that kind, as yours would be. Begin at the beginning--in Providence--go on with New York, with Poe, Willis, Margaret Fuller--all the others.... What a volume you can make--if you choose!" Unfortunately Mrs. Botta did not choose to write her "Memoirs and Reminiscences."

Had she done...