William Cullen Bryant Popular Books

William Cullen Bryant Biography & Facts

William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry early in his life. In 1825, Bryant relocated to New York City, where he became an editor of two major newspapers. He also emerged as one of the most significant poets in early literary America and has been grouped among the fireside poets for his accessible and popular poetry. Early life and education Bryant was born on November 3, 1794, in a log cabin near Cummington, Massachusetts; this home of his birth is commemorated with a plaque. He was the second son of Peter Bryant (August 12, 1767 – March 20, 1820), a physician and later a state legislator, and Sarah Snell (December 4, 1768 – May 6, 1847). The genealogy of his mother traces back to passengers on the Mayflower, including John Alden (1599–1687), his wife Priscilla Mullins, and her parents William and Alice Mullins. The story of the romance between John and Priscilla is the subject of a famous narrative poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Courtship of Miles Standish. He was the nephew of Charity Bryant, a Vermont-based seamstress, who is the subject of Rachel Hope Cleves's 2014 book, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America. Bryant described their relationship: "If I were permitted to draw the veil of private life, I would briefly give you the singular, and to me interesting, story of two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for more than forty years." Charity and Sylvia Drake are buried together at Weybridge Hill Cemetery in Weybridge, Vermont. Bryant and his family moved to a new home when he was two years old. Bryant's boyhood home, William Cullen Bryant Homestead, is now a museum. After just one year at Williams College, which he entered with sophomore standing, Bryant hoped to transfer to Yale. But a talk with his father led him to realize that the family's finances could not support it. His father advised Bryant to purse a legal career as his best available choice, and the disappointed poet began to study law in Worthington and Bridgewater in Massachusetts. In 1815, Bryant was admitted to the bar in 1815 and began practicing law in nearby Plainfield, walking the seven miles from Cummington every day. On one of these walks, in December 1815, he noticed a single bird flying on the horizon; the sight moved him enough to write "To a Waterfowl". Bryant developed his interest in poetry early in life. Under his father's tutelage, he emulated Alexander Pope and other Neo-Classic British poets. "The Embargo", a critical work on President Thomas Jefferson published in 1808, reflected Bryant's Federalist political views. The first edition quickly sold out, partly because of publicity attached to Bryant's young age at the time of its publication. A second, expanded edition included Bryant's translation of classical verse. During his collegiate studies and his reading for the law, he wrote little poetry, but encounters with the Graveyard Poets and then William Wordsworth regenerated his passion for what Bryant called "the witchery of song." Career Early poetry "Thanatopsis" is Bryant's most famous poem, which Bryant may have been working on as early as 1811. In 1817, his father took some pages of verse from his son's desk, and at the invitation of Willard Phillips, an editor of the North American Review who had previously been tutored in the classics by Bryant, submitted them along with his own work. The editor of the Review, Edward Tyrrel Channing, read the poem to associate editor Richard Henry Dana Sr., who immediately exclaimed, "That was never written on this side of the water!" Someone at the North American joined two of the son's discrete fragments, gave the result the Greek-derived title Thanatopsis ("meditation on death"), mistakenly attributed it to the father, and published it. After clarification of the authorship, the son's poems began appearing with some regularity in the Review. A portion of Bryant's poem, Thanatopsis, is at the base of the William Cullen Bryant Memorial behind the New York Public Library, which was dedicated in 1911. "To a Waterfowl", published in 1821, was the most popular. On January 11, 1821, still striving to build a legal career, Bryant married Frances Fairchild. Soon after, he received an invitation to speak from Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard University to deliver the August commencement. Bryant spent months working on "The Ages", a panorama in verse of the history of civilization, culminating in the establishment of the United States. He subsequently published "The Ages", which led the volume and was titled Poems, which he arranged to publish on the same trip to Harvard. For that book, he added sets of lines at the beginning and end of "Thanatopsis" that changed the poem. "Thanatopsis" established Bryant's career as a poet. From 1816 to 1825, Bryant depended on his law practice in Great Barrington, Massachusetts to sustain his family financially but he traded his unrewarding profession for New York City and the promise of a literary career. With the encouragement of a distinguished and well-connected literary family, the Sedgwicks, he quickly gained a foothold in New York City's vibrant cultural life. By 1832, after publishing an expanded version of Poems in the U.S. and, with the assistance of Washington Irving, in Great Britain, Bryant began to be recognized as one of his generation's greatest poets. New-York Review Bryant's first employment, in 1825, was as editor of the New-York Review, which merged with the United States Review and Literary Gazette the following year, in 1826. Bryant's stories over the seven-year period from his time with the Review to the publication of Tales of Glauber Spa in 1832 show a variety of strategies, making him the most inventive of practitioners of the genre during this early stage of its evolution. New-York Evening Post In the throes of the failing struggle to raise subscriptions, he accepted part-time duties with the New-York Evening Post under William Coleman; then, partly because of Coleman's ill health, traceable to the consequences of a duel and then a stroke, Bryant's responsibilities expanded rapidly. From assistant editor he rose to editor-in-chief and co-owner of the newspaper that had been founded by Alexander Hamilton. Over the next half century, the Post would become the most respected paper in the city and, from the election of Andrew Jackson, the major platform in the Northeast for the Democratic Party and subsequently of the Free Soil and Republican Parties. In the process, the Evening-Post also became the pillar of a substantial fortune. Despite his Federalist beginni.... Discover the William Cullen Bryant popular books. Find the top 100 most popular William Cullen Bryant books.