She was born at Dorchester, the third daughter of William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, by his wife Julia Miles. She began writing at eighteen, and from the small profits of stories and magazine articles saved enough to visit Italy, a cherished ambition. There she met and in 1867 married Samuel Thomas Baxter (1810–1903), a member of a family long settled in Florence, which then became her home. For thirty-five years she was a well-known figure in the literary and artistic life of the city, and in 1882 was elected an honorary member of the Accademia delle Belle Arti. For thirteen years her residence was the Villa Bianca, outside Florence, in the direction of Vincigliata (near Fiesole) and Settignano. Among those with whom she was associated in literary research was John Temple Leader, a wealthy English resident at Florence, who owned the castle of Vincigliata. Her literary pseudonym of ‘Leader Scott’ combined the maiden surnames of her two grandmothers, Isabel Leader being her mother’s mother and Grace Scott the mother of her father.
Her principal publication was The Cathedral Builders (1899 and 1900), an important examination of the whole field of Romanesque architecture in relation to the Comacine masons.
Selma Ware Paine (1847-1917) was a published writer and musician from Bangor, Maine who addressed the World's Parliament of Religion with an essay entitled "The Womanly Nature," which emphasized the importance of a woman's following her own path, regardless of the strictures of society. This idea was nurtured by her faith in Swedenborg principles, which stressed the concept of usefulness and the theory of the masculine and feminine nature; that a man or woman must follow one's own path in life or risk the consequences of going against one's own nature.
Mrs S. J. D. Stevens was born in Belfast, Me., July 17, 1839. Her parents, Benjamin and Eliza Dyer, soon removed to Troy, Me., where she has since resided. Previous to her marriage to Augustus Stevens, in 1861, she taught several district schools. Inherited scholarly tastes and an intense delight to wield the pen from parents and ancestors of each, although a natural diffidence and love of retirement have kept their rich thoughts hidden from the world. Her maternal grandfather was Hon. Hezekiah Chase of Amity, Me., whose widow, a beautiful and brilliant woman at the age of one hundred and one, still retains an active mind, and much personal beauty. the only grandchildren who inherit the name are Prof. G. C. Chase, of Bates College, and Rev. J. Aubury Chase, of Chelmsford, Mass. Mrs. Stevens has three children — one a student in Boston Conservatory, one in New York Medical School, and the youngest in Bates College. The education of her children has closely occupied the time and thought of the mother, but during the last two or three tears has given some time to the C. L. S. C. readings, and written several poems, mostly composed while doing the work that falls to the lot of the farmer’s wife. The Boston “Morning Star” is occasionally enriched with Mrs. Stevens’s contribution.
