 A few years later , Griswold moved back to New York City , leaving his younger daughter in the care of the Myers family and his elder daughter , Emily , with relatives on her mother 's side . He had by now earned the nickname " Grand Turk " , and in the summer of 1847 made plans to edit an anthology of poetry by American women . He believed that women were incapable of the same kind of " intellectual " poetry as men and believed they needed to be divided : " The conditions of aesthetic ability in the two sexes are probably distinct , or even opposite " , he wrote in his introduction . The selections he chose for The Female Poets of America were not necessarily the greatest examples of poetry but instead were chosen because they emphasized traditional morality and values . That same year , Griswold began working on what he considered " the maximum opus of his life " , an extensive biographical dictionary . Although he worked on it for several years and even advertised for it , it was never produced . He also helped Elizabeth F. Ellet publish her book Women of the American Revolution , and was angered when she did not acknowledge his assistance in the book . In July 1848 , he visited poet Sarah Helen Whitman in Providence , Rhode Island , although he had been suffering with vertigo and exhaustion , rarely leaving his apartment at New York University , and was unable to write without taking opium . In autumn of that year , he had an epileptic fit , the first of many he would suffer for the remainder of his life . One fit caused him to fall out of a ferry in Brooklyn and nearly drown . He wrote to publisher James T. Fields : " I am in a terrible condition , physically and mentally . I do not know what the end will be ... I am exhausted — betwixt life and death — and heaven and hell . " In 1849 , he was further troubled when Charles Fenno Hoffman , with whom he had become good friends , was committed to an insane asylum . 
