Helen Maria Hunt Jackson (1830 - 1885) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was a friend and classmate of Emily Dickinson. Gifted and prolific in all genres, Helen was best known as a passionate defender of Native American rights; one account refers to her as "the most brilliant, impetuous and thoroughly individual woman in her time." She hoped her novel, Ramona, would impact society as much as Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel written by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe. Ultimately, it did--though Helen didn?t live long enough to realize it; a play based on Ramona has been performed in California every year since 1923. For all her success as a writer, Helen suffered much personal tragedy; she was plagued with poor health for most of her life, lost both parents before she was eighteen, lost her first husband to a war incident, and watched both of her sons die from illness.