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Born: August 11, 1836, Fayette county, Kentucky, U.S.—Died: December 22, 1919, Caldwell, New Jersey

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Photo From Poems in Company with Children by Mrs. S.M.B. Piatt, 1877

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I was able to learn more about Sarah as a married woman, and about her marriage. Link also provided motifs in her work.

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Link contained great information about Piatt's themes.

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Born 11 August 1836, Lexington, Kentucky; died 2 December 1919, Caldwell, New Jersey

Wrote under: Sarah M. B. Piatt, "A Woman"

Daughter of Talbot and Mary Spiers Bryan; married John J.Piatt, 1861; children: seven, two of whom died young

Sarah Bryan Piatt was related through her mother to the earliest settlers of Kentucky, including Daniel Boone. At the age of three, Piatt moved to Versailles, Kentucky, where her mother died five years later. Piatt was raised by her maternal grandmother, a well-to-do slave-owner, and educated at the fashionable Henry Female College.

Soon after her marriage to a poet, Piatt moved to Georgetown, Virginia, where her husband was appointed to a clerkship which he held for the next six years. In 1867 they moved to North Bend, Ohio, where they built a house overlooking the Ohio River. In 1870 John Piatt, appointed librarian to the House of Representatives, returned to Washington, where his family joined him each winter. Piatt went to live in Queenstown, Ireland, in 1882 after her husband was appointed consul in Cork. During this sojourn, she became acquainted with a wide circle of literary people.

Soon after the Piatts' return from Ireland in 1894, their home was destroyed by fire. Though the house was later rebuilt, this misfortune signaled the onset of financial reverses from which they never recovered. Piatt bore seven children, two of whom died tragically. Their deaths form the subject matter and references of many of Piatt's poems, particularly those written during the earlier part of her career.

Thoroughly steeped in the traditional Southern woman's role, she was devoted to domesticity and to the instruction of her children, and never spoke to anyone about her writing. It was only through the efforts of her husband, it seems, that Piatt's work appeared in print. Of her 18 volumes of poetry, the two earliest were written in collaboration with her husband. Later volumes focus on the death of children and others, on disillusion with life and living, and to some extent on nature and the Civil War. Poems for and about children form another grouping. Piatt's interest in children elicited comment from many critics, especially Edmund Stedman, who pointed out that she had "a special gift for seeing into a child's heart." In addition to formal collections, Piatt contributed to many periodicals, among them the Atlantic Monthly and Scribner's.

If there is any difference between Piatt's early and late poems, it is in the direction of greater formal flexibility and greater awareness of the world outside. As the deaths of her two children receded in time, Piatt became less introspective. Her stay in Europe no doubt helped turn her toward less subjective themes. Some critics commented on Piatt's simplicity and "daintiness," a term so often applied to women poets. Several critics, Howells among them, commented on the universality of subject matter of the poems in relation to women's lives; Emerson Venable called the poems "sometimes deeply tragic."

Piatt's reputation was considerable, although much smaller than her husband's. Whittier quoted from her work; Stedman called her America's "best-known Western poetess." Some English critics believed her "hard to surpass on either side of the Atlantic." Piatt's melancholy tone and modesty of scope were doubtless rooted in the female literary conventions of her time. Her poems express once again the unhappiness of a woman of talent and intelligence restricted by her role as the wife of another poet, who received acclaim and satisfaction that was denied her.

Other Works:

The Nests at Washington, and Other Poems (with J. J. Piatt, 1864). A Woman's Poems (1871). A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles, Etc. (1874). Poems in Company with Children (1877). That New World, and Other Poems (1877). Dramatic Persons and Moods, and Other New Poems (1880). An Irish Garland (1884). The Children Out-of-Doors (with J. J. Piatt, 1885). Selected Poems (1885). Child's World Ballads (1886). In Primrose Time: A New Irish Garland (1886). Child's World Ballads, Second Series (1887). The Witch in the Glass, and Other Poems (1889). An Irish Wildflower (1891). An Enchanted Castle, and Other Poems (1893). Pictures, Portraits, and People in Ireland (1893). Poems (1894).

Bibliography:

Howells, M., Life in Letters of William Dean Howells (1928). Stoddard, R. H., et al., Poet's Homes (1877). Townsend, J. W., Kentucky in American Letters (1913). Tynan, K., Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences (1913).

Reference works:

Other references:

Ohio State Archeological and Historical Quarterly (Jan. 1936).

-VIRGINIA R. TERRIS

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new jerseywrote under: sarah m. b. piatt

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"a woman"daughter of talbot and mary spiers bryan; married john j.piatt

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PIATT, Sarah (Morgan) BryanBorn 11 August 1836, Lexington, Kentucky; died 2 December 1919, Caldwell, New JerseyWrote under: Sarah M. B. Piatt, "A Woman"Daughter of Talbot and Mary Spiers Bryan; married John J.Piatt, 1861; children: seven, two of whom died young Source for information on Piatt, Sarah (Morgan) Bryan: American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide from Colonial Times to the Present dictionary.

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Clear, organized, and thorough information bout Sarah Piatt.
Provided insightful information about the quantity and quality of Sarah's work.

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The Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt Recovery Project
Professor Elizabeth Renker, The Ohio State University Department of English

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836-1919), a popular, prolific, and acclaimed poet during her lifetime both in the U.S. and abroad, published more than 600 poems in venues including popular, influential, and well-regarded newspapers; elite magazines; anthologies; and periodicals for children. (No firm total is possible at this time; in fact, the results of this project to date make it clear that more works by Piatt remain to be discovered.) Born outside Lexington, Kentucky into two slaveholding families, her earliest poems were published in the 1850s by the top editors of the age, including George D. Prentice of the influential and well-known political newspaper the Louisville Daily Journal and Robert E. Bonner of the blockbuster story paper The New York Ledger. Published when she was an unmarried woman, her early poems appeared under her maiden name, Sallie M. Bryan, or under her initials, S.M.B. In 1861, just as the Civil War was breaking out, she married John James Piatt (most often called "J.J."), a poet from Ohio, and the newlyweds moved to Washington, D.C., where J.J. worked as a government clerk. Thereafter, Sarah published under variants of her married name. She and J.J. and their growing family would live in multiple locations in the subsequent decades, including Queenstown, Ireland (now Cobh) from 1882-1893, while J.J. served as U.S. Consul, Cork. Their primary home remained North Bend, Ohio, outside Cincinnati.

For decades, Sarah's work met with national and transatlantic acclaim, and she continued to publish in periodicals as well as in book form, eventually totaling eighteen volumes. Despite her robust reputation in her lifetime and her significant body of work, she fell into obscurity upon her death in 1919. At that time, modernist poets were turning against their poetic predecessors, and against women poets in particular, as allegedly stodgy and conventional. (Only recently have these twentieth-century ideologies of poetic value themselves become subjects of scrutiny and critique.) In a remarkable cultural turn whose full history remains to be written, Piatt was rediscovered in the 1990s by numerous scholars working independently of one another. Since that time, she has quickly gained stature as a major artist.

The Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt Recovery Project includes multiple kinds of initiatives designed to collect works by Piatt not currently available in modern editions and to provide records of the early waves of her recovery. This project is ongoing. At present, it includes Oral Histories and Written Memoirs by scholars who began the work of recovering Piatt from oblivion and restoring her to literary history and public memory. In this collection, scholars who contributed to the first and second waves of Piatt's recovery tell their stories about how they came to "find" Piatt-and why they identified her as a major author deserving of cultural reclamation. The Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt Recovery Project also includes The Early Poems of Sarah Morgan Bryan (Piatt) in the New York Ledger, 1857-1860, a digital archive of her early poems published in the Ledger and not otherwise available in any published edition of her work; and The Capital, 1871-1880, which makes free for public access all issues of The Capital published from 12 March 1871 through 22 Feb. 1880. A rare Washington, D.C. weekly newspaper and important historical record of Reconstruction, this paper was founded and managed by Donn Piatt, Sarah Piatt's cousin by marriage, who often featured her poems in its pages.

The "Resources for Teaching and Study" page will collect a growing array of materials, at present including independent first-wave Piatt scholar and Lutheran pastor Larry R. Michaels' catalogue of Piatt's Biblical allusions and a co-authored essay by first-wave scholars Paula Bernat Bennett and Karen L. Kilcup about Piatt's recovery and importance.

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The Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt Recovery Project

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The Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt Recovery Project Professor Elizabeth Renker, The Ohio State University Department of English Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836-1919), a popular, prolific, and acclaimed poet during her lifetime both in the U.S. and abroad, published more than 600 poems in venues including popular, influential, and well-regarded newspapers; elite magazines; anthologies; and periodicals for children.

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Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt was an acclaimed poet during her lifetime. She wrote more than 600 poems in venues, including newspapers, magazines, periodicals for kids, and anthologies. However, many of her works remain to be discovered. Piatt was born into two slaveholding families, and was related through her mother to the earliest settlers of Kentucky.  She was raised by her maternal grandmother, after her mother's death when she was only 8. She attended Henry Female College, and soon after married the poet John Piatt. They conceived 7 children, and lost two due to tragic deaths. The death of her children were in fact the subject matter of many of her poems. She was steeped in the traditional woman's role, and dedicated her life to her children and domesticity. Piatt kept her writing to herself, but was influenced by her husband to publish her work.

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Piatts early work focuses on the death of children, and death in general, the disillusion with life and living, and the Civil war.

Her later work involved less subjective themes.
The subject matter of her poems were in relation to women's lives. Her poems express the unhappiness of a talented woman, who's intelligence was restricted by her husband, which received acclaim and recognition as a poet.

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Photo Drawing of Sarah and her husband John

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Photo from: Unknown

While there are not many captured photos of Sarah, the ones I did find provided a clear image of who the author Sarah M.B. Pliatt was, and what she looked like.

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Army of Occupation (1866)

A Woman's Poems (1871)

That New World, and Other Poems (1877)

Poems in Company with Children (1877)

Dramatic Persons and Moods (1880)

An Irish Garland (1884)

The Witch in the Glass (1888)

Counsel-In the South

Giving Back the Flower

Hearing the Battle

The old Slave-Music

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Photo from The Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt Recovery Project

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Photo from American Literature,  the content writer captured some of her poem lines in the photo below.