Mercy Otis Warren – 1728-1814
Sister of James Otis, an early advocate of American independence, and married to James Warren, a Massachusetts political figure, Mercy Warren was a self-taught writer who drew on her proximity to events and personalities to write plays and poems about the American Revolution—while it was happening. Later, in 1805, she wrote the three-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, which remains valuable because of its intimate perspective on the conflict.