Agnes Lee

Agnes Lee (March 24, 1862 – July 23, 1939) was an American poet and translator. Her real name was Martha Agnes Rand.

Agnes Lee was born Martha Agnes Rand on March 24, 1862, in Chicago, Illinois, the second daughter of Harriet Husted Robinson Rand (1834–1905) and her husband William Henry Rand (1828–1915), co-founder of Rand-McNally publishers with Andrew McNally. She had at least three siblings—Mary Robinson Rand Chappell (1860–1949), William Henry Rand (1866–1931), and Susan M. Rand Springer (1869–1950.)

Lee was educated in Vevey, Switzerland. Throughout her writing career, she used various pen names, including Agnes Lee. In her poetry, she often explored the natural world. In 1890, a reviewer for The Atlantic described the poems in The Legend of a Thought as "pleasing, unpretentious verses." 

In addition to her debut collection, The Legend of a Thought (1889, published under the name Martha Agnes Rand), her other poetry books include The Border of the Lake (1910), The Sharing(1914), Faces and Open Doors (1922), and New Lyrics and a Few Old Ones (1931). She is also the author of a collection of children's verses, The Round Rabbit (1898). 

As a translator, she translated French poets/writers Théophile Gautier's Enamels and Cameos and Other Poems (1903) and Fernand Gregh's The Gates of Childhood.

Lee published frequently in Harriet Monroe's Poetry magazine, and in 1926 won the magazine's Guarantors' Prize, which had previously been won by such famed American poets as Robert Frost and Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

Lee spent her later years in Chicago and died at home of pneumonia in 1939. A selection of letters to her from Edgar Lee Masters, an admirer, is archived in the Newberry Library in Chicago.

On December 23, 1890, Agnes married photographer and publisher Francis Watts Lee (1867–1945), settling with him in Boston, Massachusetts. They had one child, a daughter, Alice S. Lee (1897–1957). After their divorce in 1910, in 1911 she married Otto T. Freer (1857–1932,) a noted Chicago surgeon, son of one of the first presidents of Rush Medical College.

Poetry

• The Legend of a Thought, and other verses (as Martha Agnes Rand). Chicago: Rand McNally, 1889.
• The Border of the Lake. Boston: Sherman, French, 1910.
• The Sharing. Boston: Sherman, French, 1914.
• Faces and Open Doors. Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1922.
• New Lyrics, and a few old ones. Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1931.

Juvenile

• The Round Rabbit. Boston: Copeland & Day, 1898.

Translations

• Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)'s Enamels and Cameos, and other poems. Cambridge, MA; Jenson Society, 1903.
• Fernand Gregh's The Gates of Childhood.

Lee died of pneumonia on July 23, 1939, in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of 77. She is buried at Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois.