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Auction: 313 - Numismatic Collector's Series - Ft. Worth, TX
Lot: 1495

Sigourney, Lydia Huntley American poet and educator (1791-1865), the best-known American woman of letters of her time. Choice pair of early works, including Autograph Verse Signed "L. Huntley," 4 pages, 4to, Hartford, CT, November 30, 1816. A warm ode "Addressed to Madame Wadsworth, on seeing her surrounded by her children, and Grand-children on Thanksgiving Day," beginning, "While thus in festive union sweet / The Parent, and the children meet / How fair to you, must seem the trace / Of Memory´s far-reflected rays..." and ending, "When she, who now the scene surveys / With mingled thoughts of Love and Praise, / Thought, life and motion pass´d away / Shal slumber in oblivious clay." With Autograph Verse, unsigned, 1-3/4 pages, 4to, Hartford, June 5, 1818, entitled "Lines written, on reading this morning ´A Letter to Maj. Gen. Dearborn by Colonel Putnam, repelling an unprovoked attack on the character of his deceased father, the late Major General I. Putnam." .The poem begins "When o´er the ashes of the mighty dead, / Base Envy steals with paralyzing tread, / Steals at the midnight hour with purpose drear / To sab the fame that living, woke its fear..." and ending, "Mark in thy race the same affection rise / As strong, as warm, as delicate, as wise, / Thus see its lustre cheer thy life´s decline, / Less tried by Envy, but as pure as thine." Second letter with integral address leaf docketed by recipient. Both with edge and fold wear, but VG. Huntley would marry a year later, and would thereafter be known primarily as "Mrs. Sigourney."

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