Nora May French

Nora May French (1881 – November 13, 1907) was an American journalist, poet, and member of the bohemian literary circles of the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club which flourished after the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906.

Early life French was born in 1881 in Aurora, New York to Edward French, a professor at Wells College and Mary Wells French, the sister of the founder of Wells Fargo, Henry Wells. When she was seven years old, her wealthy family moved to a ranch outside of Los Angeles, but within a few years they lost that property as a result of a devastating house fire and a failed fruit crop.

Career Her writing career began in her teens, when she was published in local newspapers and magazines. In her early twenties, she became engaged, off and on again, to Alan Hiley, a prosperous timber farmer. Her ambivalence about conventional marriage poured into The Spanish Girl, her best known lyrics, a twenty-two poem chronicle of doomed love. She quickly made her place within bohemian intellectual circles.

Death In 1907, she joined George Sterling and his wife at their home in Carmel. On Monday November 11, she allegedly tried to kill herself with a gunshot to the head. The incident was reported by Carrie Sterling. Two days later, during the night of November 13–14, aged 26, she died at the Sterling home (with only Mrs. Sterling present as George was in San Francisco ) from ingesting cyanide. Newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area sensationalized the tragedy with glaring headlines and reports of Bohemian dissipations as well as recent and frequent visits by prominent married men, including the artists Charles Dickman, Xavier Martinez, and Charles Rollo Peters. Writers Ambrose Bierce and Herman Scheffauer speculated that she had had an affair with George Sterling.