Author: Davidson, Lucretia Maria
Biography:
DAVIDSON, Lucretia Maria (1808-25: ANBO)
Born in Plattsburg NY, she was the daughter of a physician, Owen Davidson, and his wife Margaret (Miller) Davidson. A precocious writer but in fragile health, she died of "consumption" just before her seventeenth birthday. Among the memorial tributes was an article by Southey in the Quarterly Review in 1829 that mythologized her as a beauty and a genius destroyed by over-excitement. Lucretia's much younger sister Margaret Miller Davidson (1823-38) followed the same course, dying at fifteen; with the help of their mother, Washington Irving published a volume of her Poetical Remains in 1841 with a long biographical memoir in which he cited Southey's essay about her sister. Mrs.Davidson herself did the same for Lucretia in 1845, publishing her Poetical Remains with a memoir by Catherine Maria Sedgwick. (RPW; Washington Irving, ed. Biography and Poetical Remains of the late Margaret Miller Davidson [Philadelphia 1843] 17; ANBO 6 July 2018) HJ