LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY - A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lydia Huntley Sigourney was born on September 1, 1791, in Norwich, Connecticut, the daughter of a gardner and former Revolutionary soldier, Ezekial Huntley and Zerviah Wentworth Huntley. The Lathrops, her father's employers, would prove to be important in the development of Sigourney's career. Her mother and Mrs. Lathrop encouraged her in her reading and writing and also provided her with many social connections which would be valuable to later in her life. After Mrs. Lathrop died during her teenage years, Sigourney was so depressed that her physician said she should get away from familiar surroundings. So she went to stay with the Wadsworths of Hartford. Daniel Wadsworth, a young man her own age, became her friend, eventually helping her set up her own school and helping her get her first book published: Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse. Three years later, in 1816, she started writing for periodicals. For the next few years, she taught school in Hartford. When she was twenty-seven, she married Charles Sigourney who owned a hardware business and was president of a bank. After her first three children died, two children, Mary and Andrew, were born. Her husband objected to her publishing her works for money (he thought it degrading), but actually encouraged her, when it was anonymous. During the '20's, she continued to publish anonymously, but began to ask for payment in order to help support her elderly parents.

Her style was perfectly suited to the taste of the public at that time. Her poetry and prose was highly sentimental and moral. She enjoyed writing about travel and temperance but death, especially that of a child, was her most frequent topic, possibly because her first three children died at birth. She wrote thousands of elegaic poems. Those poems became so well known that she was often asked by perfect strangers to write epitaphs or elegies for loved ones.

She continued publishing collections of poems during this time. In 1833, she allowed her initials to be printed on The Farmer and the Soldier, A Tale, probably an indication of the unhappiness of her marriage situation. In the next two years, seven of Sigourney's books were published. One of them, Zinzendorff, and Other Poems, was reviewed by Poe in the January 1836 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger. He praised some of her poems calling them "noble" and said that they "breathe the truest spirit of the Muse." But, not surprisingly, he attacked her as well, accusing her of imitation.

When she gave up her anonymity for good, she became the most widely known "authoress" in America. She also began receiving more money for her work, which was fortunate, since her family was having financial hardships. By 1838, they were forced to move from the mansion where they had been living, into a much smaller house. During this time, she also began the pattern of having her writings published in a magazine first and then publishing them again in book form - in effect, getting paid twice for her work.

Magazines began to compete with each other in getting Sigourney's name on the title page as an editor. Louis A. Godey supposedly paid her $500 a year to name her as an editor. During the 1840's, Godey's Lady's Book, Ladies' Companion, and Graham's Magazine all wanted exclusive use of her name, but she continued to contribute prolifically to a variety of publications.

Her writings diminished a little during the fifties and sixties, but she continued the pattern of writing first for magazines and then publishing collections. She died on June 10, 1865. The poem "The Winter Hyacinth," is a good example of the sentimentality of her writings which contributed to her fame in the nineteenth century, but which consigns her to oblivion in the twentieth century.