Ellen Sturgis Hooper

Ellen Sturgis Hooper (February 17, 1812 – November 3, 1848) was an American poet. A member of the Transcendental Club, she was widely regarded as one of the most gifted poets among the New England Transcendentalists. Her work is occasionally reprinted in anthologies.

She was, besides, sister of Caroline Sturgis Tappan, also a Transcendentalist and poet, as well as an acquaintance of William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James, Sr. Biography Ellen Sturgis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of William Sturgis and Elizabeth M. Davis. Her father was a wealthy Boston merchant.

In 1837, she married physician Robert William Hooper, though her friends said they were not a good match because he was intellectually inferior. Margaret Fuller, for example, said the match was like "perfume... wasted on the desert wind".

Hooper died of tuberculosis at age 36.