April 16, 1881 [Aurora, New York] –November 13, 1907 [Carmel, California]
French was born in 1881 in Aurora, New York to Edward French, a professor at Wells College and Mary Wells French, the sister of the founder of Wells Fargo, Henry Wells. Her family moved to a ranch outside of Los Angeles in 1888, and though French was raised wealthy, a house fire and failed fruit crop brought the family to financial ruins. She published several poems in her teens and studied briefly at the Arts Students League in New York city. French joined the Charles Lummis Arroyo Seco, a group of Los Angeles writers and poets, and published in Lummis’ Out West magazine. She later became involved with Henry Anderson Lafler, an assistant editor on The Argonaut, and moved to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake where she became part of the bohemian literary circles of the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club led by George Sterling. In 1907 she joined Sterling and his wife at their home in Carmel. On November 11, tried to kill herself unsuccessfully with a gunshot to the head. The bullet took off a lock of her hair, but Nora missed her mark due to her shaky hand. Two days later, during the night of November 13–14, Nora ended her life in Sterling’s home by ingesting cyanide while Mrs. Sterling slept beside her. Three of her friends posthumously published French’s Poems in 1910, the only compilation of her work ever widely distributed until 2009’s The Outer Gate: The Collected Poems Of Nora May French.
