Sigourney, Lydia H. (1791–1865)

American author and poet. Pronunciation: Sig-ER-nee. Born Lydia Howard Huntley on September 1,1791, in Norwich, Connecticut; died on June 10, 1865, in Hartford, Connecticut; only child of Ezekiel Huntley (a gardener) and Zerviah or Sophia (Wentworth) Huntley; educated in Norwich and Hartford; married Charles Sigourney (a hardware merchant), on June 16, 1819 (died 1854); children: Mary (b. 1827); Andrew (b. 1831); and three others (stillborn); stepchildren: three.

Selected works:

Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse (1815); The Square Table (anonymously, 1819); Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since (anonymously, 1824); Evening Readings in History (anonymously, 1833); The Farmer and the Soldier (1833); Letters to Young Ladies (1833); Tales and Essays for Children (1835); Letters to Mothers (1839);Pocahontas , and Other Poems (1841); Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands (1842); The Voice of Flowers (1846); The Weeping Willow (1847); Olive Leaves (1852); Past Meridian (1854); The Daily Counsellor (1859); The Man of Uz, and Other Poems (1862); Letters of Life (1866).

Known as "the sweet singer of Hartford," Lydia H. Sigourney was the one of the bestknown poets (together with Frances Osgood and Elizabeth Oakes Smith ) publishing in the early-to-mid-19th century. She was a highly prolific writer whose vast popularity influenced other women writers of her day, but whose importance did not survive into the 20th century. Largely forgotten, her work is considered by contemporary critics as overly affected, morally pious, and sentimental.

Born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1791, the only child of Ezekiel and Zerviah Wentworth Huntley , Lydia was surrounded by people who encouraged her love for reading and writing. Her father worked as a gardener for Madame Lathrop , the widow of Dr. Daniel Lathrop and the daughter of the Hon. Joseph Talcott, governor of Connecticut. The elderly Mrs. Lathrop was so fond of Sigourney that she often asked her to read aloud from the Bible and from Edward Young's Night Thoughts. Lydia's mother encouraged her to read Ann Radcliffe 's The Mysteries of Udolpho, and prodded her to write a novel of her own.

Present at Mrs. Lathrop's death, Sigourney was apparently so grief-stricken that her parents sent her to Hartford to stay with the Wadsworths, relatives of the deceased. There she received further instruction from the wealthy Daniel Wadsworth and spent a few months attending local female seminaries. For three years beginning in 1811, Lydia and a friend, Nancy Maria Hyde , ran their own school for young ladies. Wadsworth, however, eventually asked her to teach in a school he had opened for the education of his daughter's friends; she continued to teach while launching a writing career, which rapidly assumed center stage. In 1815, she published her first book, Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse, based upon material previously prepared for her students. With subscriptions secured by Wadsworth, she used the profits of the book to support her aging parents. The following year, her work appeared in periodicals such as the North American Review.

Upon her marriage in 1819 to Charles Sigourney, a Hartford hardware entrepreneur and widower with three children of his own, Sigourney relinquished her teaching position. Moreover, her husband demanded that Sigourney publish her work anonymously, deeming it unseemly for a woman to garner public attention. Although she devoted much time to decorating the home he built for her and raising their children, Sigourney was also active in charitable work and philanthropy, contributing regularly to at least 20 periodicals to raise funds for favored causes.

Sigourney emerged from anonymity when her husband's business prospects declined and they were forced to sell their large home. She began to publish prolifically, particularly in magazines and journals after 1832. In 1833, she produced her most famous book, Letters to Young Ladies, and within a year had published eight more volumes. Now the family breadwinner, Sigourney became a dominant presence in American magazines of the mid-19th century. Estimates of her work include thousands of magazine articles and poems in nearly 300 different publications, most of which were compiled and republished in book form. By 1850, Sigourney had achieved a popularity in both America and Europe equal to that of famed poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Cullen Bryant. Several American magazine publishers, including Godey's Lady's Book, Ladies' Companion, and Graham's Magazine, competed for her name on the title pages of their publications.

At least part of Sigourney's popularity lay in her business acumen and methods of aggressive self-promotion. She cultivated the acquaintance of influential literary, social, and political figures on both sides of the Atlantic through unsolicited correspondence and visits to illustrious figures' homes, often leaving copies of her work with them. She had a habit of exaggerating the most casual of acquaintances into unsupported intimacy for the purposes of greater fame and increased sales.

Sigourney's writing was always highly personal, for she drew upon her own interpretations of historical events, her own conversations and thoughts, and even aspects of daily housework for inspiration. Her work was highly patriotic, moralistic, religious, and consistently pious (temperance was a frequent theme). Sigourney's most frequent topic, and one with which she would have much experience, was the death of children. Three of her own were stillborn, and a son, Andrew, died of consumption at age 19. However, her poems were optimistic, often ending with the image of the child's spirit ascending to heaven.

Although contemporary critics fault Sigourney's work for its sentimentality, likening it to greeting-card verse, women writers of Sigourney's time were relegated to the sphere of the sentimental for their subject matter. Further, Sigourney's fulfillment of the American dream as a poor girl who had grown famous appealed to her female readership's hopes and dreams for themselves. Although much of her fame derived from the unsophisticated literary tastes of her readers, she became popular precisely because she was able to put their thoughts into words, and she practiced the lessons that her poems taught: sobriety, thrift, patience, and virtue.

Sigourney completed her autobiography, Letters of Life, shortly before her death on June 10, 1865. Published in 1866, its scant mention of her husband may imply the unhappiness that permeated their marriage. By this time, her popularity was very much in decline, due mainly to the changing tastes of her audience. Although she failed to achieve literary immortality and outlived her own fame, she was an immensely popular poet who became a role model for similarly industrious women of her day.

sources:

Baym, Nina. "The Rise of the Woman Author," in Columbia Literary History of the United States. NY: Columbia University Press, 1988, pp. 296–298.

Bowles, Dorothy A. "Lydia H. Sigourney," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 73: American Magazine Journalists, 1741–1850. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1988.

Gay, Carol. "Lydia Huntley Sigourney," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 42: American Writers for Children Before 1900. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1985.

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1971.

McHenry, Robert, ed. Famous American Women. NY: Dover, 1980.

Howard Gofstein , freelance writer, Detroit, Michigan