Bessie Anderson Stanley

Bessie Anderson Stanley (born Caroline Elizabeth Anderson; March 25, 1879 – October 2, 1952) was an American writer, the author of the poem "Success" ("What is success?" or "What Constitutes Success?"), which is often incorrectly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson or Robert Louis Stevenson.

She was born in Newton, Iowa, and married Arthur Jehu Stanley in 1900, living thereafter in Lincoln, Kansas. Her poem was written in 1904 for a contest held in Brown Book Magazine, by George Livingston Richards Co. of Boston, Massachusetts.

Verse

The poem was in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations in the 1930s or 1940s but was removed in the 1960s.

Misattribution

Ann Landers (and her sister Abby) are also said to have misattributed the poem to Emerson and her concession to a public correction is in The Ann Landers Encyclopedia.

Personal life

Bessie Anderson Stanley died in 1952, aged 73. The verse is inscribed on her gravestone in Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas.