Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1874 at Sevenls, her family estate. Her family was Episcopalian, of old New England stock, and at the top of Boston society. She was the youngest of five children. Her eldest brother Abbott Lawrence, a freshman at Harvard at the time of her birth, went on to become the president of the collage. She was born into wealth and prominence. Her paternal grandfather, John Amory Lowell developed the cotton industry of Massachusetts with her maternal grandfather, Abbott Lawrence. John Amory Lowell's cousin James Russell Lowell was a poet. .
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As a young girl an English governess first tutored her at home, until 1883, when she was sent to a series of private schools. She was far from a model student. She wrote her first poem "Chacago" at the age of nine. She was a precocious child even among prominent family of high achievers and important New England personage. She attended private school until she was seventeen when she left to care for her elderly parents. A university education was out of the question for a Lowell daughter, although not for the sons. .
So, at home, she undertook a rigorous self-education, reading widely among several thousand books in the library of Sevenl's. She became an ardent student of poetry, especially Keat's. She also to use of the Boston Athenaeum, which her grandfather helped to start. We can see in the poem "Boston Athenaeum" she spent much of her time their expanding her knowledge.
For books but give the theme, our hearts the rest,.
Enriching simple words with unguessed harmony.
And overtones of thought we only know.
And as we sit long hours quietly,.
Reading at times, and at times simply dreaming,.
The very room itself becomes a friend,.
The confidant of intimate hopes and fears;.
A place where are engendered pleasant thoughts,.
And possibilities before unguessed. ().
In this poem she paints us a picture of what I was like to be in there.
