Harriet Eleanor Baillie Hamilton King, who wrote seven volumes of poetry with an enviable range of subjects and genres, was best known during her life as the author of a body of poems advocating and celebrating the Italian republican movement and its leaders. Her detailed knowledge of Italian history and politics and her friendship with Guiseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) gave rise to poems and prose notable for their intensity and passion. Her many lyrics, ballads, narrative poems, and devotional poems also reveal a striking imagination and a delicate sensibility as well as skill at versification. The variety and artistry of her work make all the more perplexing the relative lack of information about her life and achievements.

The daughter of Admiral W. A. Baillie Hamilton and Lady Harriet Hamilton, King was born in Edinburgh on 10 February 1840 and spent most of her childhood and adolescence in London and Blackheath. Most...