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Pearl Rivers talk slated
? Dr. Noel Polk, professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, will present a program on Eliza Jane Poitevent Nicholson (?Pearl Rivers?) today at
3	p.m. at the Crosby Arboretum?s Pinecote Pavilion in Picayune. The public is invited.
Polk, a native of Picayune, has long been a stu-dent of Mississip- R|vers pi writing and culture. He has published and lectured on such authors as William Faulkner and Eudora Welty.
Elizabeth Nicholson is known to students of journalism as the editor of the New Orleans Picayune, which flourished under her ownership from 1876 to 1896. Students of Mississippi writers will know her as the poet Pearl Rivers, author of poems published in many national magazines.
Bom in 1852 in Gainesville (Hancock County), she grew up at the Hermitage in Hobolochitto (now Picayune). She later entered the newspaper business through a chance acquaintance with the Picayune?s second owner, Alva Morris Holbrook, whom she married in 1872.
Her second marriage, in 1878, to
the business manager of the paper, George Nicholson, took place two years after Holbrook?s death. Holbrook left his widow in possession of the Picayune, and she took on the traditionally male job of editing a newspaper.
Nicholson introduced the society column to New Orleans, campaigned against cruelty to animals, denounced prize fighting, developed the Sunday edition, emphasized the coverage of sports and made the Picayune into a major metropolitan newspaper.
Her working philosophy, she once stated, was that ?nobody knows what a woman can do, least of all the woman herself, until she tries.?