| Title |
Hardy, Sylvia. |
| Alternate title |
Miss Sylvia Hardy, the Maine Giantess. |
| Publisher |
[New York? : s.n.] |
| Date |
[1855?] |
| Physical description |
1 print : engraving ; 13.6 x 12.9 cm. |
| Description |
Full-length portrait of Miss Hardy standing beside two unnamed men, perhaps as a means of depicting her extraordinary height. |
| Notes |
In The American phrenological journal, vol. 21 (May, 1855), p. 120. |
|
Miss Hardy, known during her lifetime as the Maine Giantess, was exhibited in P.T. Barnum’s American Museum during the mid-nineteenth
century as a nearly eight-foot tall curiosity.
|
|
“Miss Hardy is now thirty years of age. She has grown about seven inches since she was twenty-one, and is nearly eight feet
high at the present moment. She weighs three hundred and forty-six pounds, is massively proportioned, robust, matronly in
appearance, symmetrical in figure, but inclined to stoop, (as most tall people are,) a habit acquired in her native village,
where her gigantic height subjected her to a scrutiny on the part of strangers, most annoying to her bashful nature. Her features
are large. The expression of her face, if not handsome, is amiable ; her disposition is mild and gentle to a pleasing degree.
Her voice is somewhat coarse, but not unmusical. Her movements are easy and graceful ; although, having never before left
her village home, she is as yet unsophisticated in fashionable ways, and moves and acts with a timidity that a little more
acquaintance with public life will readily remove… She certainly is one of the most wonderful natural phenomena of the age.”--P.
120.
|
| Genre |
Portrait prints -- 1850-1859. |
|
Engravings -- 1850-1859. |
| Subject |
Hardy, Sylvia -- Portraits. |
|
Women. |
|
Giants. |
|
Phrenology. |
| Related resource |
http://www.librarycompany.org/extraordinarywoman/dwarf.htm |
