[15] Eventually, her father placed her and a younger sister in the care of their aunt, Mrs. Annie Boone, who lived in New Castle, Kentucky.

[16][17] She became an avid reader, and was especially fond of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, Walter Scott, Felicia Hemans, and Robert Browning.

[20] When George D. Prentice, writer, poet, and editor of the Louisville Journal, encountered her poetry, he immediately recognized her talent and skill.

[22] On June 18, 1861, she married aspiring poet John James Piatt (also known as "J.J."), who at the time was working as a secretary for Prentice.

[23] Throughout their relationship, J.J. managed Sarah's career, including submitting her poems to periodicals and arranging for the publication of her work in book form.

From 1870 to 1876, Sarah and the children joined J.J. in Washington, D.C., in the winters where he was serving as librarian of the United States House of Representatives.

[25] During this time, Sarah's poems appeared in the Washington, D.C., weekly newspaper The Capital, founded by Donn Piatt, her cousin by marriage.

[9] In 1882, the Piatts moved to Queenstown (now Cobh) Ireland, as J.J. had accepted the position of Consul of the U.S. to Cork, a job he held for eleven years.

Piatt was the mother of Marian (b 1862); Victor (1864); Donn (1867); Fred (1869); Guy (1871); Louis (1875); and Cecil (1878) as well as at least one infant child and possibly others who died in infancy.

Stoddart observed that “her poems are thoughtful and deep in sentiment, but sometimes obscure.” [34] Literary scholar Karen L. Kilcup has tracked how critics typically praised “her womanliness while critiquing her obscurity and difficulty,” often remaining “oblivious to her depth.” [35] Despite the popularity Piatt enjoyed during her career, her work fell into obscurity after her death in 1919.

[37] Over the past twenty years, a growing body of scholarship has brought her to wider public attention as a contender for entry in the literary canon.