Virginia Woodward Cloud (1861-1938)
Cloud was born in Baltimore, Maryland to two proud Virginians, Daniel and Maria Woodward Cloud. Cloud lived in Baltimore for her entire life and was educated at the Roland Academy. She never married. Cloud was a professional writer who attained both a local and national reputation. Cloud had been a promising writer from a young age. Her family said when she was a teenager she was such a talented poet that a Western publisher returned one of her submitted poems because they thought it had been plagiarized. In her career as an author, she published several books of poems and contributed many short stories to periodicals. A member of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore from its inception, she served as a member of the Board of Managers between 1905-1915. She shared many of her own works in the club’s meetings and also demonstrated her skill as a reader by frequently performing readings of other members’ works.
Sources
“Virginia W. Cloud, Noted Poet, is Dead.” Baltimore Sun, Apr. 6, 1928: 22.
Cloud, Virginia Woodward. The Collected Poems of Virginia Woodward Cloud. Henry Harrison, 1939.
Fleming, W. L. The South in the Building of the Nation: Southern Biography. vol. 11, Southern Historical Publication Society, 1909.