-Hilda Conkling

Hilda was born 8 October 1910 in Easthampton, Massachusetts, but did not live there long. The family moved to Northampton, where her mother was assistant professor of English at Smith College. Hilda had a sister, Elsa, two years older than her, but her father (Roscoe Platt Conkling) and mother separated when she was four years old. The two girls and their mother led a happy, tranquil life on the banks of the Connecticut river in Northampton, where they loved to walk in the woods and enjoy nature together. It was on one of these walks that 4 year old Hilda first recited a poem to her mother that she'd thought of in her head. Her mother was astonished at the quality of the verse, and wrote it down as soon as they returned to the house. Thus began a ten year special relationship between Grace and her daughter, a bond which would comprise the themes of many of Hilda's poems.

When Hilda was about 10 years old, her mother decided that she would encourage Hilda to write down her own poems, and gradually stopped doing so for her. The result was that, by the time Hilda entered high school, she was no longer composing poems at all. It is a complete mystery as to why she did not continue writing poetry as an adult (read about why here), but as it turned out, her adulthood was rather unremarkable for someone who had been so precocious as a child. She never married, but lived with her mother until her mother's death in 1958, and she worked managing bookstores in Northampton and then in Boston. She died 26 June 1986 at the age of 76. Her sister Elsa, who had married (Elsa Kruuse), outlived her by six years.