Biography:

Writer; music teacher, composer.  Born– November 10, 1840, Marion, Ala. Parents– Woodson St. George and Mary Elizabeth (Binyon) Cocke. Education– Graduated from Judson College, 1856. Travelled and studied music in Europe. Beginning in 1869 she was for several years principal of the Music Department at Judson; director of the Music Department in the University of the Northwest in Lake Forest, Illinois for some time; then for three decades lived in Boston and taught music to students from Harvard College. Translator for Boston Public Library. Moved back to Alabama in 1918; lived in Mobile and Gadsden. Published essays, short stories, and poems in national periodicals; also composed songs and other musical compositions.  About 1915 her portrait was hung in the State House of Representatives in Montgomery as an expression of appreciation for her achievements as an Alabama author and musician.  Died December 3, 1929.

Source:

Biographical Dictionary of Southern Authors; Woman’s Who’s Who of America, 1914-1915; Who Was Who in Alabama; and Musical Alabama, Vol. 1.

Publication(s):

Cherokee Rose and Other Southern Poems. Boston; R.G.Badger, 1907.

A Doric Reed. Boston; Copeland & Day, 1895.

The Mimosa Tree. S.l.; s.n. (manuscript), s.d.

When Grasshoppers Hop and Other Poems. S.l.; s.n., 1904.

Joint_Publications;

Lilly’s Girlhood, or Child and Woman.  Philadelphia:  E.S.Stuart, 1881.

Songs:

Farewell. Cincinnati; Root & Co., s.d.

Flow Down Cold Rivulet to the Sea. Cincinnati; Root & Co., s.d.

If I Had Thought Thou Coulds’t Have Died I Might Not Weep for Thee. Cincinnati; Root & Co., s.d.

Lullaby. Cincinnati; Louis H. Ross & Co.

Thou Has the Words of Eternal Life. Cincinnati; Root & Co., s.d.

To Whom! Oh Blessed Savior, Can We Go? Richmond, Va.; F. A. North & Co., s.d.

Waltz Song. Cincinnati; Root & Co., s.d.

Two Cradle Songs. S.l.; s.n., s.d.

What Baby Must Do. Cincinnati; Ross & Co., s.d.

Where the Sandman Gets His Sand. Cincinnati; Ross & Co., s.d.

Piano_Compositions;

Beau of Virginia. Cincinnati; Ross & Co., s.d.

Tyrolienne. Cincinnati; Ross & Co., s.d.

Papers;

Papers of Zitella Cocke are held by Bowling  Library at   Judson College, by the Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, and the the Alabama Department of Archives and History.