Maria Gowen Brooks

(c.1794–1845), Massachusetts poet, whose first volume, Judith, Esther, and Other Poems (1820), was praised by Southey, who dubbed her “Maria of the West,” a name she later used as a pseudonym, along with its translation, Maria del Occidente. She removed to Cuba, where she wrote tragic dramas and further poetry, including her epic Zóphiël (1833). She was also the author of a romance, Idomen; or, The Vale of Yumuri (1843).

From The Oxford Companion to American Literature in Oxford Reference.