author
L. H. (Lydia Howard) Sigourney
1791–1865
A bestselling 19th-century American poet once known as the "Sweet Singer of Hartford," she built a remarkable literary career at a time when few women could live by their writing. Her poems and prose reached a wide popular audience and helped make her one of the best-known women authors of her era.
2 Audiobooks
Olive Leaves; Or, Sketches of Character
by L. H. (Lydia Howard) Sigourney
The Man of Uz, and Other Poems
by L. H. (Lydia Howard) Sigourney
About the author
Born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1791, Lydia Huntley Sigourney was educated in Norwich and Hartford and began her working life as a teacher. She opened schools for girls in both Norwich and Hartford before turning more fully to writing, publishing her first book, Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse, in 1815.
Sigourney became one of the first American women to achieve broad commercial success as a writer. Often called the "Sweet Singer of Hartford," she published dozens of books and contributed widely to periodicals, writing poetry, essays, advice literature, biography, and travel pieces. Her work was known for its moral tone, emotional directness, and strong engagement with religion, memory, family life, and public events.
She married Charles Sigourney in 1819 and continued to write throughout her life, balancing literary work with family responsibilities. Though modern readers may know her less well than some of her contemporaries, she was enormously popular in her own time and remains an important figure in the history of American women's writing.