When she was just fourteen, Felicia Browne published a volume of poems by subscription. One of the subscribers, Captain Alfred Hemans, soon sought her out; they were betrothed when she was sixteen and married three years later. In the next six years she bore five children and produced three more books, but the marriage then failed, and she and her husband separated. Despite heavy domestic duties she continued to publish poems and plays until her final illness. She gained the admiration of many writers male and female, and became friends with such luminaries as Walter Scott and William Wordsworth. Hemans’ poetry was very popular in Britain and America well into the twentieth century, and such poems as “The Stately Homes of England” and “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers” were memorized by countless schoolchildren.