SOURCE: “Introduction,” in In Praise of Common Things: Lizette Woodworth Reese Revisited, edited by Robert J. Jones, Greenwood Press, 1992, pp. 1-18.

In the following essay, Jones provides an overview of Reese's life and career.

In 1921, Lizette Woodworth Reese sent to the Saturday Review of Literature, along with Spicewood her small volume of poems, a short note. In it she wrote, “I am small, fair, grey, and good-humored. Also quick tempered. I love Life, and Beauty, and People.”¹ It was a succinct summary of her personality, but did little to indicate her powers of observation and recall, her sensitivity, or the exquisite simplicity of her writing.

She published, in a life of 80 years, ten slim books of poetry, a short book of selected poems, stories and poems in various periodicals, two books of prose reminiscences, and a fragment of a novel. The revolution in poetic styles and tastes which...