Sigourney

Sigourney, MRS LYDIA HUNTLEY (Huntley being her maiden name), American authoress, was born at Norwich, Connecticut, 1st September 1791. For five years she taught a class of ladies in Hartford; in 1815 she published Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse; and in 1819 she married a Hartford merchant. In 1822 she published a descriptive poem on the Traits of the Aborigines of America; and in 1824 a Sketch of Connecticut Forty Years Since. These were followed by Pocahontas and other Poems, Lays of the Heart, Tales in Prose and Verse, &c., and Letters to Young Ladies and to Mothers, both of which passed through many editions, in England as well as America. In 1840 she visited Europe, and on her return wrote her Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands. She compiled amusing and instructive books for the young, and was a constant contributor to magazines and other periodicals of poems, whose subjects, style, and sentiment gave her the designation of 'the American Hemans.' She died at Hartford, 10th June 1865. See her autobiographical Letters of Life (New York, 1866).