Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney, "the sweet singer of Hartford," was with little doubt the most popular poet of the nineteenth century. Her work, which included volumes of prose and poetry and innumerable periodical contributions, appealed particularly to young women and their mothers. The twentieth century, however, has either ignored her or treated her with contempt, at times tempered with condescension. Her poetry and prose are so imbued with all the worst traits of nineteenth-century sentimentality, religiosity, and morbidity that few have been able to discuss her work with any degree of objectivity, at least until the 1970s.

Born the only daughter of a gardener, Ezekiel Huntley, and his second wife, Zerviah Wentworth Huntley, she was often in the home of her father's employer, a wealthy and aged widow, Mrs. Daniel Lathrop. Mrs. Lathrop, evidently drawn by the child's intelligence and pliant good nature, kept Lydia Huntley with her...