Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919) was an American poet and novelist who started writing as a child and had her first poem published when she was only 13. Her poem ‘Solitude’ contains the much-quoted line “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone.” Her first collection was Poems of Passion (WB Conkey, 1883). Throughout her life she was interested in spiritualism and believed in reincarnation.