Hilda Conkling

Hilda Conkling began composing the poems in Poems By a Little Girl orally between the ages of four and ten. Her mother, Grace Hazard Conkling, wrote the poems down as Hilda spoke them, retaining the young writer’s phrasing rather than reshaping it into conventional verse. Published in 1920 with an introduction by Amy Lowell, the collection moves through flowers, weather, birds, moonlight, fairies, and the changing seasons with unusually concentrated images. Poetry Foundation records that Conkling grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, where her mother taught English at Smith College, and that the family’s literary household encouraged her imagination. The volume established her reputation before two later collections, Shoes of the Wind and Silverhorn. Readers approaching Poems By a Little Girl encounter both a historical curiosity and a distinctive poetic voice, one grounded in close attention to the natural world. Project Gutenberg’s edition also preserves the original dedication, Lowell’s introduction, and the collection’s thematic groupings.