author
Mary Gardiner Horsford
1824–1855
A 19th-century American poet whose work blends feeling for nature, home, and legend. Her best-known book, Indian Legends and Other Poems, appeared in 1855, the same year her life ended far too early.
1 Audiobook
Indian Legends and Other Poems
by Mary Gardiner Horsford
About the author
Born Mary L'Hommedieu Gardiner in New York in 1824, she spent much of her youth on Shelter Island and was educated at the Albany Female Seminary. She later married chemist Eben Norton Horsford and wrote poetry alongside family life.
Her writing is remembered for its graceful, reflective tone and for its interest in landscape, memory, and Native American legend. Indian Legends and Other Poems, published in 1855, is the work most closely associated with her today.
Horsford died on November 25, 1855, while still a young woman, and her small body of work has the sense of a promising career cut short. Though not widely known now, she remains part of the rich tradition of 19th-century American women poets.