Lillian Rogers in 1982, the year her book of poems, “More Laughter Than Tears,” was published. Her pen name was Lilja Rogers. Shown on the porch of Sea Wind Farm, North Hampton NH. Photograph provided by, and used with permission of, her grand-daughter, Heather Hillbom Hogan.
Lilja Rogers is an often-quoted but little known New Hampshire poet. We share her with Wallingford, Connecticut, her birth place in 1901, where she was brought up in a talented family.
Her father Henrik Hillbom (sometimes mis-spelled Hillborn) was a noted landscape painter and silverware designer. Lilja was also called “Lilly” but most often she used the name Lillian. She attended Wallingford schools, and attended one year at the Tilton School (1918), then a finishing school in New Hampshire. She graduated from Wallingford High School (Wallingford CT) in 1919.
In June 1922 she married Percy Couch Rogers. A few months later they applied for passports to travel to Europe, where Percy studied languages at Toulouse University and the University of Granada. While in Europe she attended the University of Toulouse, France 1922-23 Ecole des Beaux Arts, and when living in Stockholm Sweden from 1939-40, she attended the School of Foreign Languages. Continue reading
