Lydia Howard Sigourney

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Standard Name: Sigourney, Lydia Howard
Birth Name: Lydia Howard Huntley
Indexed Name: Lydia Huntley
Married Name: Lydia Howard Sigourney
Indexed Name: Mrs L. H. Sigourney
LHS has been called the first professional woman poet of the USA.
Watts, Emily Stipes. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. University of Texas Press, 1977.
90
Immensely prolific, she published more than sixty-five books (didactic, educational, biography, children's, and travel books as well as poetry), and stopped counting at over 2,000 contributions to periodicals, annuals, and gift books. Late in life she commented, I think now with amazement, and almost incredulity, of the number of articles I was induced by the urgency of editors to furnish.
qtd. in
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
1
Her very high contemporary reputation has as yet led to no real revival of interest in her work.
Full-length photograph of Lydia Howard Sigourney by Matthew Brady. She is seated on a wooden chair with wooden panelling behind her, wearing a dark jacket and hood with lace bonnet and collar, and a full, boldly checked skirt. She holds a handkerchief in her hands.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Mary Ann Browne
Mary Anne Jevons included three poems by MAB in her little Liverpool publication The Sacred Offering. A Poetical Annual, 1834.
Jevons had launched this venture in 1831, and for the first two numbers all...
Family and Intimate relationships Caroline Bowles
Robert Southey died in March 1843, the immediate cause being typhus.
Blain provides varying dates of death for Southey throughout her biography of CB , including the 20th and the 23rd of March. Most sources...
Friends, Associates Fanny Fern
While FF was a well-known writer she did not participate widely in the literary world, perhaps because of the dislike of pretension that prompted her to eschew involvement in fashionable society as well as the...
Friends, Associates Catharine Maria Sedgwick
Closest to CMS were her siblings and their spouses, several of whom were also published authors. The Sedgwick family and Fanny Kemble were apparently the inner circle of the literary scene in the Berkshires,...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Barrett Browning
EBB 's disembodied participation in literary and artistic society expanded as she established often voluminous correspondences with Harriet Martineau , Richard Hengist Horne , painter Benjamin Robert Haydon , and American literati such as James Russell Lowell
Intertextuality and Influence E. M. Hull
She purportedly used the pseudonym E. M. Hullfor fear of disgracing her family.
Melman, Billie. Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties. Macmillan, 1988.
90
She wrote her first novel for personal distraction
qtd. in
Beauman, Nicola. A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39. Virago, 1983.
189
while her husband was away during the First World War; she...
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
FH 's gender and her preoccupation with gender in her poetry worked both for and against her. The Essay on Her Genius which US poet Lydia Sigourney wrote as a preface for Harriet Hughes's 1840...
Literary responses Marguerite Gardiner Countess of Blessington
Although she was offered only £5 for American rights to the novel, Lydia Sigourney reported to her that Meredith received high praise in leading US periodicals.
Molloy, Joseph Fitzgerald. The Most Gorgeous Lady Blessington. 4th ed., Downey, 1896.
400
In England, the London Court Journal praised the...
Literary responses Marguerite Gardiner Countess of Blessington
US writer Lydia Sigourney , who had visited Blessington at Gore House, was one of many to comment favourably on this annual in correspondence with her.
Molloy, Joseph Fitzgerald. The Most Gorgeous Lady Blessington. 4th ed., Downey, 1896.
287
Textual Features Dorothy Wellesley
DW 's selection, though, demonstrates a serious interest in women's literary and feminist history. Of the selections whose authors can be identified, almost half are women. Though Marguerite, Lady Blessington , doyenne of the albums...
Textual Features Sarah Josepha Hale
Editorial policy was to avoid anything controversial in mainstream politics. The magazine never mentioned the Civil War during the course of the conflict. In contrast to the Ladies' Magazine, the new one had a...
Textual Features Mary Anne Jevons
An anonymous preface dated from Liverpool in October 1830 said that this annual would not set out to rival more splendid ones: it would offer mostly devotional poems, and none that were not improving. MAJ
Textual Production Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Wilcox's first impulse was to refuse this request to cross the Atlantic in winter, alone, but then her husband said he would come with her. She found the hurry and discomfort fully repaid by the...
Textual Production Sarah Josepha Hale
The volume featured introductions to the poets excerpted. SJH included some of her own poems as well as others by Lydia Sigourney , Frances Sargent Locke Osgood , and Sarah Helen Whitman .
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Textual Production Frances Ridley Havergal
Other newly published texts included Royal Gems and Wayside Chimes for the Months of the Year in 1884, Letters by the Late Frances Ridley Havergal, The Poems of Frances Ridley Havergal and Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Timeline

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Texts

Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Biography of Pious Persons. Merriam, Little, 1832, 2 vols.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard, and Felicia Hemans. “Essay on the Genius of Mrs. Hemans”. The Works of Mrs. Hemans, Lea and Blanchard, 1840, p. 1: vii - xxiv.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Letters of Life. D. Appleton, 1866.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse. Sheldon and Goodwin, 1815.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Past Meridian. D. Appleton; J. P. Jewett, 1854.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands. J. Munroe, 1842.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Pocahontas, and Other Poems. Harper and Brothers, 1841.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Poems. Key and Biddle, 1834.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard. The Daily Counsellor. Brown and Gross, 1859.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard, and Andrew Sigourney. The Faded Hope. R. Carter and Brothers, 1853.
Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Traits of the Aborigines of America. University Press, Hilliard and Metcalf, 1822.