Frances Sargent Osgood - Writing

Writing

Osgood was a prolific writer and contributed to most of the leading periodicals of the time. She was one of the most admired women poets during the mid-1840s. Osgood was very open and personal in her writings, often discussing the relationships she had with others, despite her shy personality. A large portion of her body of work is love poetry but she also addresses poems to her mother, her sister, her husband, and several friends. The poems written to her children are not sentimental, but literary historian Emily Stipes Watts wrote that they "are honest attempts to express thoughts and emotions never so fully expressed before by women in poetry" depicting a sincere concern for their development and well-being.

Griswold once said that she created poems "with almost the fluency of conversation." Poe, in a review of her work, wrote that she was "absolutely without rival, we think, either in our own country or in England." He reviewed her poetry collection A Wreath of Flowers from New England in the September 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book, saying that its author exhibits "deep feeling and exquisite taste" and her work deserved wider circulation.