By Clara Silverstein
Jan. 23, 2019
Many Americans learn the song, “America the Beautiful,” in elementary school but may not know that its author, Katharine Lee Bates, was an English literature professor at Wellesley College. Born in Falmouth in 1859, Bates began writing poetry as a teenager and was chosen class-day poet at Newton High School, which she attended from 1874-1876. By the time she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880, she had published a poem in The Atlantic Monthly.
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