Lucretia Maria Davidson

Infobox Writer
name = Lucretia Maria Davidson


imagesize = 200px
caption =
birthdate = September 27, 1808
birthplace = Plattsburgh, New York
deathdate = August 27, 1825
deathplace = Plattsburgh, New York
occupation = Poet

Lucretia Maria Davidson (September 27, 1808 - August 27, 1825) was an American poet of the early 19th century.

She was born in Plattsburgh, New York on September 27, 1808. Her father, Oliver Davidson, was a physician, and her mother, Margaret Miller, was an author. She was sent at the age of four to Plattsburg Academy, where she learned to read, later developing an interest in such authors as Oliver Goldsmith and William Shakespeare. She learned to write at age seven. Davidson was an extremely precocious child, and she wrote her first known poem, "Epitaph on a Robin", at the age of nine. Davidson died at Plattsburgh on August 27, 1825, at the age of 16 years and 11 months of tuberculosis, then known as consumption, although it has been speculated that her condition may have been linked to anorexia nervosa. [Vincent, Patrick H. "Lucretia Davidson in Europe: Female Elegy, Literary Transmission and the Figure of the Romantic Poetess". Section 6. [http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2003/v/n29/007724ar.html] ] Davidson wrote prolifically in her short life, and her surviving poems, of various lengths, number 278.

Davidson was praised, with varying levels of enthusiasm, by such notable figures as Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Southey, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Sedgwick wrote a biographical sketch which was included with Davidson's "Poetical Remains", and Desbordes-Valmore wrote an ode to her.

Southey's influential, romanticizing 1829 study of her, which compared Davidson to Thomas Chatterton and Henry Kirke White, greatly enhanced her reputation. Southey also remarked upon her personal beauty: "In person she was exceedingly beautiful. Her forehead was high, open, and fair as infancy; her eyes large, dark, and of that soft beaming expression which shews the soul in the glance." [Adams, H.G. (ed.) "A Cyclopædia of Female Biography". 1857. Page 223. [http://books.google.com/books?id=mVUBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA233&#PPA233,M1] ] Poe was critical of Southey's role in the creation of the romantic 'myth' of Davidson, noting the distinction in quality between her 'poetic soul' and the actual quality of her output. [Poe, Edgar Allan. "Margaret Miller Davidson and Lucretia Maria Davidson". [http://www.eapoe.org/works/CRITICSM/dvdson.htm] ] Davidson's sister, Margaret Miller Davidson, was also a noted and published poet; she too died of consumption in her teens and was praised posthumously. Her brother, Levi P. Davidson, was a lieutenant in the US army.

Notes

External links

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=hA4TAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1&#PPP15,M1 "Poems" at Google Books]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=Xw4TAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage&#PPR11,M1 "Poetical Remains of the Late Lucretia Maria Davidson" at Google Books]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=JxMTAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=#PPR1,M1 "Amir Khan and Other Poems" at Google Books]