Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton
Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton was born into the rarified upper-class in Boston. She married Perez Morton, a Boston lawyer, but had a tumultuous home life amidst her husband’s affair with her sister. Initially, Morton wrote poetry not for publication but instead for circulation among her friends. Finally, in 1790, Ouabi: or the Virtues of Nature. An Indian Tale in Four Cantos, the first of her many books, appeared in print under her penname, Philenia, a Lady of Boston.