Life and career
Rebecca Ruter grew up between Indianapolis and New Albany, the daughter of the Methodist minister Calvin W. Ruter. She wrote poetry as a girl and studied at Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati. A poem she read there around the time of her graduation in 1850 brought her verse before an audience. She subsequently published in periodicals, establishing her first reputation as a poet.
In 1859 she married William M. Springer, a lawyer who later represented Illinois in Congress. His work took the family to Washington for extended periods. By the time A Woman of the Century profiled her in 1893, she had published the novels Beechwood and Self and a collection of poetry, Songs by the Sea. The devotional book that would reach her largest readership still lay ahead.
Work and ideas
Intra Muros grew out of an experience Springer associated with a dangerous illness. She described entering a heavenly world where the recently arrived are received by people they have loved and lost. She addressed the account to readers who knew what it meant to grieve. The title, Latin for “within the walls,” places the speaker inside a place the living can ordinarily only imagine.
Springer’s earlier experience as a novelist is audible in this book. People speak to one another, recognise a face, enter a house and discover how a household lives. Those small incidents give a bereaved reader a way to picture a reunion. Later editions have circulated under the title My Dream of Heaven, carrying the work to readers unfamiliar with her earlier verse and fiction.
