Emma Bell Miles

Emma Bell Miles (October 19, 1879 – March 19, 1919) was a writer, poet, and artist. Her works capture the essence of the natural world and the culture of southern Appalachia.

Early life and education Emma Bell was born on October 19, 1879, in Evansville, Indiana. Her father, Benjamin Franklin Bell, and her mother, Martha Ann Mirick Bell, were both teachers. Emma's early childhood was spent in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, a small town on the Ohio River near Cincinnati. When she was nine, her family moved to Red Bank, Tennessee, and then to Walden's Ridge (now Signal Mountain), Tennessee.

In the fall of 1899, Emma Bell accompanied her teacher, Zerelda Rains, to St. Louis where she entered the St. Louis School of Art. She returned to Walden's Ridge after only two years due to homesickness. There she fell in love with George Franklin Miles, also known as Frank. Bell married Frank on October 30, 1901, just three weeks after her mother's death.

Emma and Frank had five children: twin daughters Jean and Judith (September 1902), son Joe Winchester (February 1905), Katharine “Kitty” (January 1907), and Mark (March 1909). Emma and Frank separated a number of times, and during these times Emma lived in the Francis Willard Home for Women in Chattanooga to make money in town. She proved to be a darling of society and she often gave lectures which were highly regarded and well received. She also held the post of writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee for one term. Yet no matter how much Emma enjoyed the intellectual life of the city, she always returned to her simple life on the mountain with her husband.

For two months in 1914, Emma worked for the Chattanooga News and took on the role for paying her family’s bills. She spent many of her weekends in the country to get away from city life. She left the newspaper in June 1914 because she became pregnant. In response, she wrote in her journal, “All is lost now; my hope, my health all sacrificed to a man's pleasure...”. She later adds “I have tried every way to escape what is coming, but for some reason the usual methods failed. Frank is kinder and more reasonable than he has ever been, and very sorry for what he has done...”. In August, she miscarried the baby. She had planned to return to her job at the Chattanooga News to pay back the hospital bills, but she notes in her journal, “this Frank positively refuses to let me do.” Emma's book, Our Southern Birds, was published in 1922.

Her journals also contain several references to manuscripts of other works that remain unpublished, including The Good Gray Mother and Our Southern Flowers. Some of Emma's poetry, journals, and short stories were later published in Strains from a Dulcimore (1930), Once I Too Had Wings: The Journals of Emma Bell Miles, 1908-1918 (2014), and The Common Lot and Other Stories: The Published Short Fiction, 1908-1921 (2016).

Legacy Grace Toney Edwards gave a talk on her at the Glencoe Mansion in 2017.