Mary Baker Eddy’s poem “The Old Man of the Mountain” was first published in The Floral Wreath, and Ladies’ Monthly Magazine, July, 1844. The author is listed as “Mrs. G. W. Glover”—Mary Baker Eddy was married to George Washington Glover until his death in 1844. Along with the poem, a two-paragraph foreword was also included in the magazine.
A similar foreword can be found in the present edition of Mary Baker Eddy’s Poems and reads as follows:
The “Old Man of the Mountain,” for instance, was written while the author was contemplating this lofty New Hampshire crag, whose rugged outlines resemble the profile of a human face. Inspired by the grandeur of this masterpiece of nature’s handiwork, and looking “up through nature, unto nature’s God,” the poem began to take form in her thought, and alighting from her carriage, she seated herself by the roadside and began to write. Some tourists who were passing, and who made her acquaintance, asked her what she was writing, and she replied by reading the poem to them. They were so pleased with it that each requested a copy, which was subsequently mailed to them. Similar requests continued to reach the author for years afterward.1
Both the foreword and the poem were reprinted in the Odd Fellow publication, The Covenant, Baltimore, MD, July 1846. The poem alone was reprinted in a gift book that went through numerous changes in publisher and title, but always with the same plates used for the text so that the pagination was always the same. The list of various titles of this gift book is as follows:
Gems for You; From New Hampshire Authors. F.A. Moore, compiler, Manchester, N.H.: William H. Fisk, 1850, pp. 11213.
Gems for You; A Gift for All Seasons. F.A. Moore, compiler, Manchester, N.H.: William H. Fisk, 1851.
The Book of Gems; A Gift for All Seasons. Eugene Sinclair, compiler, Manchester, N.H.: William H. Fisk, 1854.
The Book of Gems; A Gift for All Seasons. Eugene Sinclair, compiler, Boston: J. Buffum, 1856.
A Gift for You, of Prose and Poetic Gems. Eugene Sinclair, compiler, Boston: G.W. Cottrell, 1857. This edition was also issued in 1858 and 1859.
The Book of Gems; A Gift for All Seasons. Eugene Sinclair, compiler, Manchester, N.H.: [W.H.] Fisk, 1858. This issue is recorded in the National Union Catalog and may have an incorrect form of publisher’s name.
Friendship’s Offering, A Gift for All Seasons. Eugene Sinclair, compiler, Manchester, N.H.: Fisk & Stearns, 1858.
The poem alone was also reprinted in the following publications:
The Poets of New Hampshire, Being Specimen Poems of Three Hundred Poets of the Granite State, With Biographical Notes. Bela Chapin, compiler, Claremont, N.H.: Charles H. Adams, 1883, pp. 755-56.
The Concordia: Lines Written by Natives and Residents of Concord, New Hampshire. Alma Jane Herbert, compiler, Concord, N.H.: Rumford Printing Company, 1907, p. 79.
