Alice Cary was born on 26 April 1820 in Mount Healthy, Ohio, then a small rural community north of Cincinnati, and died in New York City on 12 February 1871. During her lifetime she became one of the most widely read American women poets of the nineteenth century, as well as a successful novelist, sketch writer, editor, lecturer, and literary hostess. Her name was once familiar in households that memorized poems, san…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Alice Cary
Poet B
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 79%
Poems 78%
Blended 79%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Lydia Huntley Sigourney, born Lydia Howard Huntley on 1 September 1791 in Norwich, Connecticut, became one of the most widely read, industrious, and culturally influential American writers of the nineteenth century. During the height of her career, her poems were printed in newspapers and magazines, memorized by schoolchildren, recited at funerals, quoted from pulpits, and displayed in family albums. She wrote for re…
“If there is any kitchen in Parnassus, my Muse has surely officiated there as a woman of all work, and an aproned waiter.”
In time
Alice Cary
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
1791
1871
They overlapped for 46 years (1820–1865).
When Alice Cary was born, Lydia Huntley Sigourney was about 29.
Alice Cary was about 45 when Lydia Huntley Sigourney died.
On the map
About 1,085 km separate Mount Healthy, Ohio, USA from Norwich, Connecticut, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
women
domestic
religious
Alice Cary: mount healthy, new york city, phoebe cary, the female poets of america, poems of alice and phoebe cary, clovernook, hagar: a story of to-day, nearer home. Lydia Huntley Sigourney: norwich, connecticut, sweet singer of hartford, moral pieces, traits of the aborigines of america, indian names, charles sigourney, daniel wadsworth.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Alice Cary
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Emotional landscapes
Alice Cary: Irony, Sorrow, Wonder. Lydia Huntley Sigourney: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality.