Anne C. Lynch Botta was a poet and prose writer of modest achievement; her talents were all the greater as the hostess of her literary salon. By her own admission, people were the main passion of her life and friendship was her mental sustenance. From 1845 on, her house at 116 Waverly Place in New York became the gathering place of the leading literary figures of the day, and she, as its guiding spirit, became a cultural force.

Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta was born 11 November 1815 in Bennington, Vermont, the daughter of Charlotte Gray Lynch of New England, granddaughter of Lieutenant Colonel Ebenezer Gray, who had fought in the American Revolution. Anne's father, Patrick Lynch, a friend of the poet Thomas Moore, had been imprisoned for taking part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Refusing allegiance to the British government, he was exiled, and he came to America and established a dry-goods...