Sigourney, Lydia Howard, 1791-1865

Variant names
Dates:
Birth 1791-09-01
Death 1865-06-10
Birth 1791
Death 1865

Biographical notes:

Lydia Huntley Sigourney (born September 1, 1791, Norwich, Connecticut–died June 10, 1865, Hartford, Connecticut), poet, also known as the “Sweet Singer of Hartford", was the only daughter of a gardener. She attended private school with the assistance of her father’s employer, and founded a Hartford school for girls in 1814. At this school, without any specialized training, Sigourney taught a deaf student, Alice Cogswell, to read and write in English. Cogswell would later be the first student enrolled in the country’s first school for deaf children.

In 1815 Sigourney published her first book, Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse. In 1819 she married Charles Sigourney, a wealthy widower with three children. They settled in Hartford and had five children, three of whom died in infancy.

Her husband encouraged her to devote her time to writing, but requested that she publish her work anonymously. She did so until 1833, when the family encountered financial hardship. Using her own name, Sigourney quickly found success and published over dozens of volumes of poetry and essays. Her poetry frequently engages Native American and anti-slavery concerns within a religious context, and often takes the form of elegy.

Sigourney worked as an editor for Godey’s Lady’s Book and published her work in many journals. On a tour of Europe in 1840, Sigourney met with writers including Maria Edgeworth, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle, an experience she wrote about in Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands (1842). Her memoir, Letters of a Life (1866), was published posthumously.

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Subjects:

  • American literature
  • Booksellers and bookselling
  • African Americans
  • African Americans
  • Authors, American
  • Poets, American
  • Women authors, American
  • Authors
  • Authors
  • Authors and publishers
  • Women authors
  • Autographs
  • Blind
  • Blind
  • Botany
  • Burglary
  • Charities
  • Childbirth
  • Children
  • Children and death
  • Children's literature
  • Colonization
  • Correspondence
  • Death
  • Death in literature
  • Elegiac poetry, American
  • Families
  • Flax
  • Ice cream, ices, etc.
  • Ice navigation
  • Illustration of books
  • Indians, Treatment of
  • Manuscripts, American
  • Marine art
  • Mentally ill Care
  • Mothers
  • Mothers and daughters
  • Old age in literature
  • Older people
  • Patience
  • People with disabilities
  • Poetry
  • Women poets
  • Press releases
  • Printers
  • Printing plates
  • Privately printed books
  • Puddings
  • Sea poetry
  • Steamboats
  • Transportation
  • Valentines
  • Ventriloquists
  • Wedding anniversaries
  • Women
  • Women authors, American - 19th century
  • Ẁomen authors, American
  • Women in agriculture
  • Women's rights
  • African Americans
  • Authors
  • Blind

Occupations:

  • Publishers
  • Authors
  • Poets
  • Publisher

Places:

  • CT, US
  • CT, US
  • Great Britain (as recorded)
  • Massachusetts--Boston (as recorded)
  • Connecticut--Bridgeport (as recorded)
  • Connecticut--Hartford (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)
  • Connecticut--Hartford (as recorded)
  • Connecticut--Hartford (as recorded)
  • Connecticut--Hartford (as recorded)
  • Great Britain (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)
  • Hartford (Conn.) (as recorded)
  • Connecticut--Hartford (as recorded)
  • Norwich (Conn.) (as recorded)
  • Connecticut (as recorded)
  • Hartford (Conn.) (as recorded)
  • Connecticut--Hartford (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)
  • North America (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)

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