LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 recordings of Be Kind When You Can by Eliza Cook. This was the Weekly Poetry project for January 30, 2011.

Eliza Cook was an English author, Chartist poet and writer born in London Road, Southwark.

She was the daughter of a local tradesman. She attended the local Sunday Schools and was encouraged by the son of the music master to produce her first volume of poetry. From this she took confidence and in 1837 began to offer verse to the radical Weekly Dispatch, then edited by William Johnson Fox. She was a staple of its pages for the next ten years. She also offered material to The Literary Gazette, Metropolitan Magazine and New Monthly. (summary from Wikipedia)