COOK, ELIZA (1818-1889), English author, was born on Dec. 24 1818, in Southwark, the daughter of a local tradesman. She was self-taught, and began when a girl to write poetry for the Weekly Dispatch and New Monthly. From 1849 to 1854 she conducted a paper for family reading called Eliza Cook's Journal. She also published Jottings from my Journal (186o), and New Echoes (1864); and in 1863 she was given a civil list pension. As the author of a single poem, "The Old Armchair," Eliza Cook's name was for a generation after 1838 a household word both in England and in America. She died at Wimbledon on Sept. 23 1889.