Lydia Sigourney Huntley

Background

Lydia Sigourney, the only child of Ezekiel Huntley and his second wife Zerviah (Wentworth) Huntley, was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in the house of Mrs. Daniel Lathrop, by whom her father was employed as gardener.

On her father's side she was of Scotch descent, her grandfather having emigrated from Scotland as a young man. For old Mrs. Lathrop she formed a sentimental attachment that inspired scores of youthful poems and left its impress on her whole life.

Education

She was educated in Norwich and Hartford.

Career

From 1811 to 1813 she conducted a school in Norwich with a friend, and in 1814 went to Hartford to establish a small school for girls. For their use she wrote much of her first book, Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse (1815), and her persuasive teaching and kindly personality had an enduring influence upon her young pupils.

But the promising career was interrupted by her marriage to Charles Sigourney.

A man of good classical education, he was inclined to be a little over-precise and pedantic, but he commanded general respect, and Mrs. Sigourney's friends believed that the humble school mistress had made a very fortunate marriage. Finding, however, that her husband's affluence had been exaggerated, she turned to writing to supplement her means - anonymously at first, since her husband bitterly opposed her writing under her own name.

Her success was marked. By 1830 she was contributing regularly to more than twenty periodicals, and three years later she dropped her anonymity. The volumes of prose and verse that appeared regularly each year and her constant contributions to the magazines and the newly risen annuals - she herself edited The Religious Souvenir for 1839 and 1840 - soon brought her a good income. Such edifying volumes as How To Be Happy (1833) and Letters to Young Ladies (1833), were followed by numerous poems and sketches, reading books for children, several memoirs, even by a History of Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome (1836).

She was so popular that she was paid well by Louis Godey for the mere use of her name as an editor of the Lady's Book; her contributions at the same time to the rival Ladies' Companion brought strong protests from him. It is almost impossible to find a number of one of the popular magazines of the thirties or forties that does not contain a poem or an article by her, and though Edgar Allan Poe in a review in the Southern Literary Messenger for January 1836 accused her of too direct imitation of other writers he continued to solicit her contributions.

By 1840 "the American Hemans" was sufficiently prosperous to go to Europe to secure new literary material, of which she was in urgent need. Toward the end of her two months' stay in Paris, she was presented to Louis Philippe; most of the time, however, she lived in England, attending to the publication of Pocahontas, and Other Poems (1841), Poems, Religious and Elegiac (1841), and a new edition of her Letters to Young Ladies, cultivating "literary friendships, " calling on Samuel Rogers, the Carlyles and the Wordsworths, and distributing presentation copies of her poems with a lavish hand.

On her return to America the inclusion in Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands (1842) of extracts from a letter of Mrs. Robert Southey gave the world its first intimation of the Poet Laureate's mental disintegration and precipitated a storm of recrimination. Mrs. Sigourney, who had never seen Mrs. Southey, was accused of having interpolated in the letter "phrases implying intimacy and ejaculations of pathos, " and in spite of the warm defense of her friends the affair was never satisfactorily explained.

She spent the rest of her life quietly in Hartford, writing, busying herself with charities, receiving the visiting celebrities who stopped to pay their respects.

Regularly, year after year, appeared the sentimental volumes. Among the number of pious memoirs she wrote is The Faded Hope (1853), an account of her son Andrew, who died in 1850, not yet twenty.

The death of her austere husband in 1854 and the marriage of her daughter left her quite alone, but there was no cessation in the steady stream of books - sixty-seven all told - which her unimpeachable morality and tuneful echoing of conventional sentiments made popular.

Vigorous at its best, her prose style, like her poetry, is too often spoiled by absurd circumlocutions and an affected elegance. The theme of most of her writing is death. The inevitable regularity with which her poetic tribute followed the demise of any prominent person led a wag to declare that she had added a new terror to death. She herself died in Hartford, survived only by her daughter. Her autobiography, Letters of Life (1866), was published after her death.

She was commonly known as the "Sweet Singer of Hartford". Most of her works were published with just her married name Mrs. Sigourney.

Achievements

• Her influence was tremendous. She inspired many young women to attempt to become poets. She contributed more than two thousand articles to many (nearly 300) periodicals (1911 Encyclopædia Britannica) and some 67 books. The main themes of Sigourney's writing include death, responsibility, religion - a strong belief in God and the Christian faith - and work. She often wrote elegies or poems for recently deceased neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. Her work is one example of Victorian-era death literature which views death as an escape to a better place, especially for children.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Memories and Legends of Connecticut

    (Memories and Legends of Connecticut Lydia Sigourney, pop...)

  • Sketch of Connecticut

    (Sketch of Connecticut Lydia Sigourney, popular American p...)

  • Whisper to a Bride / by Mrs. L. H. Sigourney

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Works of Lydia Sigourney

    (35 works of Lydia Sigourney American poet (1791-1865) Th...)

  • The Western Home and Other Poems

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Sketches

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Select Poems

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Letters to the Young Ladies

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Letters of Life

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Great and good women

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Mrs. Sigourney's Letters To Mothers (1839)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Olive Leaves (Perfect Library)

    ("Olive Leaves" from Lydia Sigourney. American poet (1791-...)

  • Poems for the sea

    (Poems for the sea. 164 Pages.)

  • How to be happy

Personality

Her fellow citizens were proud to think that this demure lady who sewed and knitted and chatted like one of themselves was at the same time "the recipient of costly gifts from Royalty in honor of her Muse" and "the most famous of the female bards of her country. " In her later years she was described as a short little woman in a full dress of black satin and a fine lace cap with wide satin ribbons, her hands soft and patrician, and her flaxen curls carefully arranged.

Quotes from others about the person

• According to Teed:
  
  "As a dedicated, successful writer, Lydia Sigourney violated essential elements of the very gender roles she celebrated. In the process, she offered young, aspiring women writers around the country an example of the possibilities of achieving both fame and economic reward. "

Connections

On June 16, 1819 she married to a widower with three children, Charles Sigourney, who had come from Boston in 1800 to open a hardware business in Hartford.

Father:

Ezekiel Huntley Huntley

Mother:

Zerviah (Wentworth) Huntley

Spouse:

Charles Sigourney

References

• Lydia Sigourney: Critical Essays and Cultural Views