Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney's place in magazine history is deserved more for her prodigious production of prose and poetry than for her editorship of Godey's Lady's Book and the Ladies' Companion. Journalism historian Frank Luther Mott uses the adjectives "omnipresent" and "ubiquitous" in referring to Sigourney's presence in American magazines of the mid nineteenth century. No exact count exists of her published magazine pieces--many of them published anonymously--but the number is estimated at several thousand in nearly three hundred different publications. Most of those magazine articles and poems were compiled and republished in book form. By 1850 Sigourney, referred to as the "sweet singer of Hartford," was the most widely known woman writer in both America and Europe, a reputation that led several American magazine publishers to compete for her name on the title pages of their publications.

Sigourney was born in Norwich, Connecticut, the only child of Ezekial...