Do They Miss Me At Home?

Do They Miss Me At Home? is a song composed by S.M. Grannis with lyrics by Caroline Atherton Mason. The song was published in 1852 and enjoyed great popularity upon its publication. It was later popular among soldiers during the Civil War.

"Do They Miss Me At Home?"
Song
LanguageEnglish
Published1852
Songwriter(s)Caroline Atherton Mason
Composer(s)S.M. Grannis

Background and composition

The lyrics to the song were written as a poem by Mason and published in the Salem Register in 1844, where young Mason published a number of poems under the name "Caro".[1][2] Her first volume of verse appeared in January 1852, Utterance, or Private Voices to the Public Heart, and Do They Miss Me At Home? appeared as the first poem.[3][4][5] Utterance received a fairly warm reception from literary reviewers.[6][7][8][9][10][11]

The poem was set to music by Grannis, and the song published by Oliver Ditson's music publishing house by mid-1852. The original sheet music was credited to Grannis with no mention of the author of the lyrics. The sheet music touted that it was being "sung by the Ampheons", a singing group which included Grannis, "at their principal concerts throughout the country."[12]

Reception

The song was "universally popular in its time",[13] and its popularity carried into the Civil War, where Mason's lyrics, written as a homesick girl away from home at school, readily translated to the plight of the soldiers on both sides, and was among the songs soldiers would sing.[14][15]

The song generated a number of responses, as well as a parody titled Do They Miss Me In The Trenches?[15] Poet James Whitcomb Riley wrote of its lasting popularity in an 1885 poem titled, "A Old-Played Out Song".[16]

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References
  1. Emerson, William Andrew. Fireside Legends, p. 79 (2d ed. 1900)
  2. Barrett, Faith & Cristanne Miller (ed.) "Words for the Hour": A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, p. 387 (2005)
  3. Mason, Caroline Atherton Briggs Utterance, or, Private voices to the public heart: a collection of home-poems (1852)
  4. Briggs family. Papers, 1820-1915: A Finding Aid Archived 2014-07-03 at the Wayback Machine, Harvard University Library, Retrieved May 11, 2012
  5. Mason, Caroline Atherton. The lost ring and other poems (1892) (with introduction by Charles G. Ames providing biography of Mason)
  6. The Editors Table, The Ladies' Repository, January 1852, at p.278
  7. Notices of Recent Publications, Christian Examiner, January 1852, at p. 158
  8. (15 December 1851). , Norton's Literary Advertiser, p. 90 col. 4
  9. (10 January 1852). New Books, Littell's Living Age, p. 48
  10. Review of New Books, Graham's Magazine (April 1852), at p. 442-43
  11. Critical Notices, American Whig Review, March 1852, at p. 283
  12. (26 June 1852). Musical Review, Dwight's Journal of Music, p. 93
  13. (21 November 1891) The Lost Ring and Other Poems, The Literary World
  14. Hanaford, Phebe A. Daughters of America, p. 235 (1883)
  15. Silber, Irwin, ed. Songs of the Civil War, p. 119 (1995)
  16. The complete works of James Whitcomb Riley, Vol. III, p. 542 (1913)

Further reading
  • "The Poets of Essex County, Massachusetts" written by Sidney Perley, publishedby S. Perley, 1889.


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