author
L. H. (Lydia Howard) Sigourney
1791–1865
Remembered as the "Sweet Singer of Hartford," she was one of the first American women to build a major literary career, publishing dozens of books and writing for hundreds of periodicals. Her poems and prose brought domestic life, religion, grief, history, and moral reflection to a wide 19th-century audience.
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 Howard Huntley Sigourney became a teacher before turning to writing full time. After her marriage to Charles Sigourney in 1819, she continued publishing under the name L. H. Sigourney and went on to become one of the best-known American women writers of her era.
She was widely called the "Sweet Singer of Hartford," a nickname that reflects both her popularity and her public image as a poet of feeling and moral seriousness. Over the course of her career, she published more than 50 books and contributed to hundreds of magazines and journals, writing poetry, essays, travel pieces, children's literature, and advice-oriented works.
Sigourney's work often explored memory, faith, family life, death, and national history, and it reached a remarkably broad readership in the United States. Though modern readers may know her less well than some of her contemporaries, she was an important early example of a woman making a successful and lasting career from literature in 19th-century America.