CARTWRIGHT, Mrs. Florence Byrne, poet, born in Galena, Ill., 27th December, 1863. She resided for many years in Grass Valley, Cal., where she had charge of the postoffice until May, 1890. In June 1890, she became the wife of Dr. Richard Cartwright, of Salem, Ore., who is a descendant of Edmund Cartwright, D.D., F.R.S., inventor of the power loom, and of Major Cartwright, of colonial fame. Mrs. Cartwright's sympathies are purely Californian, as her parents moved to that State when she was only four months old. Not being strong, she was unable to take a university course, but she had the best of teaching at home. She has traveled extensively. Her future will be devoted to literary work in the Northwest. She is one of the most earnest and enthusiastic devotees of metrical composition on the Pacific Coast, and she has a qualification which few other authors possess, that of taking infinite pains and observing the strictest rules of form, and at the same time producing a careless effect. Her talent runs particularly to old French forms, which appeal to her from their difficulty and novelty, but her favorite style is the sonnet, and her delight in that form never wearies. She has written everything from the simple triolet to the sestina and chant-royal. Her first rondeau was published in the "Californian" in 1882, and her first sestina in the "Overland" in November, 1883. A sestina appearing in "Harper's Magazine" in May, 1884, has been much copied.
(American Women Fifteen Hundred Biographies Vol. 1, by Frances Elizabeth Willard & Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, Publ. 1897. Transcribed by Marla Snow)