Frances Sargent Osgood
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Frances Sargent Osgood (nee Locke) (1811 - 1850) was a U.S. poet, famous for her exchange of poems with Edgar Allan Poe in the Broadway Journal. Also, the answer to the riddle of Poe's "A Valentine" is her name, found by taking letter 1 from line 1, letter 2 from line 2, and so on. Much was rumoured of their relationship but nothing definitive exists to show proof of any impropriety.
She was born in Boston to a prosperous mercantile family; her elder sister, Anna Maria Wells, was also a published poet. Her poetry was published from an early age, first by editor Lydia Maria Child in a book of children's poetry. After meeting through a portrait sitting, Frances (known as "Fanny") married painter Samuel Stillman Osgood in 1834 and the couple spent the next 5 years in England. While in England, she published her collection A Wreath of Flowers from New England. Returning to America to live in New York, Osgood became a popular member of New York literary society and a prolific writer, helping to support her family. She died of tuberculosis in 1850.
To Frances S. Osgood
by Edgar Allan Poe
Thou wouldst be loved? - then let thy heart
- From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
- Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
- Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
- And love - a simple duty.
