Elisabeth Cavazza

Elisabeth Cavazza (née, Jones; after first marriage, Cavazza, after second marriage, Pullen; 1849 – July 14, 1926) was an American author, journalist, and music critic.

Accustomed to speaking Italian and English, she received thorough training in singing, piano, and musical theory. When little more than a school-girl in Maine, she was taught journalism by Stanley Pullen, then the youthful owner and chief editor of the Portland Press, for whose columns she wrote unsigned verse, sketches and book reviews, acting also as musical critic. A parody in the manner of Algernon Charles Swinburne's Atalanta, "Algernon in London" deceived some leading members of the Century Club of New York City, from whom she received a card of admission to that club, sent on the supposition that the drama was the work of a man. A second parody, in which Robert Browning figured was not only forgiven by the poet, but also rewarded by a letter. In 1885, she was married to Nino Cavazza of Modena, Italy, who was then in the last stage of illness, and he died in her mother's house a few weeks after. She at once resumed writing, becoming known to readers of magazines as "E. Cavazza", and published a volume of stories of Calabrian peasant life, entitled Don Finimondone. She was editor of the Italian department of the Transatlantic, and on the editorial staff of the Boston Literary World, also contributing to many periodicals. In 1894, she married Stanley Pullen. Her writings signed thereafter as Elisabeth Pullen.^[1] She was also the author of The Man from Aidone, Rocco and Sidora, and Mr. Whitman, as well as translations from the Italian and the French. Her poetical tragedies, Algernon in London and Algernon the Footstool-Bearer, published in the Portland "Transcript", attracted wide attention in the United States and England.^[2]