the East Coast and Europe with Miller, but stayed behind in San Francisco because she felt obliged to care for her mother and her seriously ill, widowed sister Agnes who was unable to care for herself or for her two children. In late 1871 she took on the care of another dependent when Joaquin Miller brought her a teenaged Indian girl (widely rumored to be his own daughter) to care for while he went abroad again, this time to Brazil and Europe. At a literary dinner on May 5, 1874, Coolbrith was elected an honorary member of the Bohemian Club, the second of four women so honored. This allowed the members of the club to discreetly assist her in her finances, but their help was not enough to cover her full burden. Coolbrith moved to Oakland to set up a larger household for her extended family. Coolbrith's sister Agnes died late in 1874, and the orphaned niece and nephew continued to live with Coolbrith. Coolbrith wrote "Beside the Dead" in grief from the loss of her sister. Her mother Agnes died in 1876. To support the household, in late 1874 Coolbrith took a position as the librarian for the Oakland Library Association, a subscription library that had been established five years earlier. In 1878, the library was reformed as the Oakland Free Library, the second public library created in California under the Rogers Free Library Act (Eureka was first). Coolbrith earned a salary of $80 per month, much less than a man would have received. She worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. Her poetry suffered as a result. She published only sporadically over the next 19 years—working as Oakland's librarian was the low point of her poetic career. At the library, her style was personal: she discussed with the patrons their interests, and she selected books she felt were appropriate. In 1886, she befriended and mentored the 10-year-old Jack London, guiding his reading. London called her his "literary mother". Twenty years later, London wrote to Coolbrith to thank her. Coolbrith also mentored young Isadora Duncan, who later described Coolbrith as "a very wonderful" woman, with "very beautiful eyes that glowed with burning fire and passion". Magazine writer Samuel Dickson reported that, at a soirée in 1927, an aging Coolbrith told him of the famous lovers she had known, and that she had once dazzled Joseph Duncan, Isadora's