Frances Sargent Osgood.
Frances Sargent Osgood.
Frances Sargent Locke Osgood [6. 18. 1811 – 5. 12. 1850] was an American poetess, children’s author, and essayist who achieved transatlantic success through her voluminous poetic output across the 1830s and 1840s. A regular contributor to both American and British journals, Osgood achieved widespread popularity while living in England, where she produced her first two volumes of poetry before returning home to become a primary contributor for such well-known periodicals as Graham’s Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Magazine.
A fixture at Anne Lynch’s salon from 1845-1846, Osgood’s reputation as simple “songbird” poetess allowed critics of both her own and modern times to approach her work reductively, slating her as a “sentimental” poetess. Recent discoveries in the Osgood archive, however, have revealed that this reputation may have been as intentional a construction on Osgood’s part as that of her poetry itself and that the “real” Osgood was neither so simplistic nor so reducible as her male contemporaries wished her to be.
