Lydia Huntley was born on September 1, 1791, the only child of Ezekiel and Zerviah Huntley of Norwich, CT. Raised in a devoutly Christian family, Lydia demonstrated an aptitude for journal writing and poetry at an early age. Her father’s employer, Mrs. Daniel Lathrop was impressed with Lydia’s scholarly endeavors and offered to facilitate the expansion of her educational curriculum. Mrs. Lathrop’s long term friendship with the Wadsworth family of Hartford in turn opened doors for young Lydia to receive private tutoring in the arts and sciences as well as Latin and Hebrew.
Lydia translated her personal thirst for learning into a teaching career. She provided classes in basic educational skills for the impoverished children of Norwich. Together with her friend Nancy Maria Hyde, she opened a girl’s school in the city in 1811. Unfortunately, the school had to close after about one year due to the failing health of Ms. Hyde.
Following the death of Mrs. Lathrop, Lydia found a new benefactor in the person of Daniel Wadsworth, who offered Lydia the use of several rooms in his spacious Hartford home for a new school for girls. Lydia implemented an enlightened nineteenth century feminist approach to the education of girls. Rather than the traditional “feminine” subjects such as art and needlepoint, Sigourney’s curriculum for her female students included reading, arithmetic, history and philosophy.
Daniel Wadsworth engaged his social and entrepreneurial connections to help Lydia obtain her first publishing contract and she released her first work Moral Pieces in Prose in 1815. The book proved to be a widespread success with the reading public. Her popularity with the public was noticed by publishers which led to other writing opportunities in the burgeoning trade of popular magazines.
In 1819, Lydia married Charles Sigourney, a Hartford merchant. Charles was a traditional conservative businessperson who disapproved of his wife’s writing career. Lydia continued to write and publish her work anonymously during the next decade and devoted much of her time to raising her two children.
In 1833, Lydia disclosed to the public that she was in fact the author of the best-selling book Letters to a Young Lady by a Lady. The book had previously been published under a pseudonym. This public revelation coincided with the collapse of her husband’s business enterprise. Free to publish under her own name again, Lydia shrewdly negotiated lucrative book and magazine contracts establishing a steady financial stream for her family. During a two year period she published nine volumes of prose and poetry becoming one of the most popular poets of the mid-nineteenth century in the United States.
The apex of her popularity occurred in 1849 with the publication of her book Illustrated Poems. In this book, some of her poems touched on the themes of gender inequality, the abolition of slavery and the criminal mistreatment of Native Americans. During the 1850’s she published at the rate of roughly one book per year.
Lydia Sigourney died in Hartford, CT on June 10, 1865. Though her reputation as a writer faded with time, her legacy as a popular poet and best-selling author of over thirty books and hundreds of magazine articles remains a historical fact. To view images of Lydia Sigourney and read examples of her poetry visit the page of historical photographs on the Otis Library website.