Bessie Anderson Stanley (born Caroline Elizabeth Anderson, March 25, 1879 - October 2, 1952) was an American writer, the author of the poem "Success" ("What is success?" or "What Constitutes Success?"), which is often incorrectly attributed[1] to Ralph Waldo Emerson[2] [3] or Robert Louis Stevenson.[4]
She was born in Newton, Iowa, and married Arthur Jehu Stanley in 1900, living thereafter in Lincoln, Kansas. Her poem was written in 1904 for a contest held in Brown Book Magazine,[5] by George Livingston Richards Co. of Boston, Massachusetts[2] Mrs. Stanley submitted the words in the form of an essay, rather than as a poem. The competition was to answer the question "What is success?" in 100 words or less. Mrs. Stanley won the first prize of $250.[6]
Written in verse form, it reads:
The poem was in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations in the 1930s or 1940s but was mysteriously removed in the 1960s.[5] It was again included in the seventeenth edition. However, it does appear in a 1911 book, More Heart Throbs, volume 2, on pages 1–2.[7]
Ann Landers (and her sister Abby) are also said to have misattributed the poem to Emerson and her concession to a public correction is in The Ann Landers Encyclopedia.[5]
Bessie Anderson Stanley died in 1952, aged 73. The verse is inscribed on her gravestone in Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas.