Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

Although Piatt is not well known today, during her lifetime her work was widely read and reviewed in the U.S. and Europe.

• Name — Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt • Birth Name — Sarah Morgan Bryan • Born — August 11, 1836 • Birthplace — Lexington, Kentucky, U.S. • Died — 22 December 1919 • Place of death — Caldwell, New Jersey, U.S. • Resting Place — Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. • Occupation — Poet • Language — English • Education — Henry Female College • Notable Works — A Woman's Poems • Children — 7

Sarah Morgan Bryan was born near Lexington, Kentucky, on August 11, 1836, to Talbot Nelson Bryan and Mary Spiers Bryan. She was the eldest of three children. Her mother was related to the Stocktons, Simpsons, and other early Kentucky settlers. Her paternal grandfather, Morgan Bryan, was one of the pioneer settlers of that state and the early settlement Bryan's Station, as well as a relation by marriage of Daniel Boone, whom the Bryans accompanied from North Carolina into Kentucky. Both of Piatt's parents were descended from slaveholding families. When Piatt was three, the family moved near Versailles, Kentucky. When she was eight, her mother died. The loss had a profound impact on her life and outlook, as evident in her poetry. After her mother's death, Piatt lived on various Kentucky plantations with relatives, accompanied by her mother's nurse, an enslaved African-American woman. For a time, she lived with her grandmother, and then later went to live with her father at the home of his new wife. Eventually, her father placed her and a younger sister in the care of their aunt, Mrs. Annie Boone, who lived in New Castle, Kentucky. In New Castle, Piatt attended Henry Female College, graduating in 1854. She became an avid reader, and was especially fond of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, Walter Scott, Felicia Hemans, and Robert Browning. While a student, she began publishing her poetry in the local newspaper. During the early part of her career, she published under her maiden name, Sarah (or Sallie) M. Bryan, or her initials, S.M.B.

When George D. Prentice, writer, poet, and editor of the Louisville Journal, encountered her poetry, he immediately recognized her talent and skill. In 1855 he wrote to her: "I now say emphatically to you again... that, if you are entirely true to yourself, and if your life be spared, you will, in the maturity of your powers, be the first poet of your sex in the United States. I say this not as what I think, but what I know." Prentice became Piatt's mentor and advocate, publishing many of her poems in his newspaper. She also began sending her work to The New York Ledger, a popular and significant periodical with a national circulation. On June 18, 1861, she married aspiring poet John James Piatt (also known as "J.J."), who at the time was working as a secretary for Prentice. The couple relocated to Washington, D.C., where J.J. had accepted a clerk position in the U.S. Treasury. During this period they published The Nests at Washington (1864), a collection featuring a section of poems by each of them. The work was J.J.'s second book (following the 1861 Poems of Two Friends with William Dean Howells) and Sarah's first. Throughout their relationship, J.J. managed Sarah's career, including submitting her poems to periodicals and arranging for the publication of her work in book form. In July 1867, they moved to Ohio, where J.J. worked for Cincinnati newspapers. They made their home on a part of the old estate of William Henry Harrison in North Bend, Ohio, a few miles south of Cincinnati, on the Ohio River. The family shuttled back and forth to Washington, D.C. on a few occasions, such as when J.J. worked for the postal service. From 1870 to 1876, Sarah and the children joined J.J. in Washington, D.C. in the winters, where he served as librarian of the United States House of Representatives. During this time, Sarah's poems appeared in the Washington, D.C. weekly newspaper The Capital, founded by Donn Piatt, her cousin by marriage. Her first independent collection of poetry, A Woman's Poems, appeared anonymously in 1871. This came to be her best known work, made famous by Bayard Taylor's book, The Echo Club. The volume was followed by several more, including A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles (Boston, 1874), That New World (Boston, 1876), Poems in Company with Children (Boston, 1877), and Dramatic Persons and Moods (Boston, 1878). During this period, she also contributed to many prominent American magazines, such as The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's Monthly, The Century Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and St. Nicholas Magazine. In 1882, the Piatts moved to Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, as J.J. had accepted the position of Consul of the U.S. to Cork, a job he held for eleven years. While abroad, Sarah wrote many poems inspired by her time in Ireland. She continued publishing poetry collections, including An Irish Garland (Edinburgh, 1884), Selected Poems (London, 1885), In Primrose Time: a New Irish Garland (London, 1886), The Witch in the Glass, and Other Poems (London, 1889), and An Irish Wild-Flower (London, 1891), all of which were issued simultaneously in the U.S. Sarah and J.J. also published another volume featuring both of their work, The Children Out-of-Doors: a Book of Verses (Edinburgh, 1884).

Piatt was the mother of Marian (b 1862); Victor (1864); Donn (1867); Fred (1869); Guy (1871); Louis (1875); and Cecil (1878) as well as at least one infant child and possibly others who died in infancy. Victor died in a tragic fireworks accident in 1874, and Louis drowned in a boating accident in 1884 while the Piatts were living in Ireland. After J.J.'s death in 1917, Piatt lived with her son Cecil in Caldwell, New Jersey. She died of pneumonia on December 22, 1919. Sarah and J.J. are buried at Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio.

• A Woman's Poems. 1871 • A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles. 1874 • That New World, & Other Poems. 1877 • Poems in Company with Children. 1877 • Dramatic Persons and Moods: with Other New Poems. 1880 • A Book about Baby and Other Poems in Company with Children. 1882 • An Irish Garland. 1885 • In Primrose Time: a New Irish Garland. 1886 • Mrs. Piatt's Select Poems: a Voyage to the Fortunate Isles and Other Poems. 1886 • Child's-World Ballads: Three Little Emigrants, a Romance of Cork Harbour, 1884, etc. 1887 • The Witch in the Glass, etc. 1888 • An Irish Wild-Flower, etc. 1891 • An Enchanted Castle, and Other Poems: Pictures, Portraits and People in Ireland. 1893 • Poems. 1894 • Complete Poems. 1894 • That New World: The Selected Poems of Sarah Piatt (1861-1911). Ed. Larry R. Michaels. Toledo, OH: Bihl House Publishing, 1999. • Palace-Burner: The Selected Poetry of Sarah Piatt. Ed. Paula Bernat Bennett. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.

With her husband: • The Nests at Washington, and Other Poems. 1864 • The Children Out-of-Doors: a Book of Verses. 1885

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