Soon afterward her mother observed that her writing paper was disappearing strangely, and finally discovered a pile of little blank books, containing artfully sketched pictures, with descriptions in poetry, all printed in Roman letters, turned and twisted in a curious fashion.

Before she was twelve she had read much history, and the dramatic works of William Shakespeare, Oliver Goldsmith and August von Kotzebue, with many popular novels and romances.

[1] When about fourteen years old she was allowed to attend a ball in Plattsburgh, but, in the midst of her preparations, was found sitting in a corner writing verses on "What the World Calls Pleasure".

[1] Davidson died at Plattsburgh on August 27, 1825, at the age of 16 years and 11 months of tuberculosis, then known as consumption, although it has been speculated that her condition may have been linked to anorexia nervosa.

Davidson was praised, with varying levels of enthusiasm, by such notable figures as Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Southey, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Catharine Sedgwick.

Southey's influential, romanticizing 1829 study of her, which compared Davidson to Thomas Chatterton and Henry Kirke White, greatly enhanced her reputation.

At ten, while visiting in New York, she wrote, in two days, a drama entitled The Tragedy of Alethia, and acted in it with some young friends, taking the principal part.