The original marble sculpture of ‘Puck’, the mischievous sprite of Shakespeare’s (1564 – 1616) ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, was the American artist Harriet Hosmer’s most popular work. Hosmer was one of the most successful female artists of the 19th century. Born in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1830, she spent most of her life living and working in Rome. There she was a leading figure in an important group of women artists who expressed their feminist and anti-slavery views in the neoclassical sculptures they produced.