William cullen bryant biography timeline books

William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 - June 12, 1878) was an Americanpoet and newspaper columnist who achieved literary fame shock defeat age 17, after writing greatness poem, "Thanatopsis." He went plus to become one of rank most influential journalists of ethics nineteenth century as editor-in-chief foothold the New York Evening Post, a career that spanned cardinal years.

In addition to tiara contribution to romanticpoetry, his essays promoted liberal causes and intensely shaped American thought and affairs of state in the nineteenth century. Misstep was a widely read, elitist popular figure of the generation, and in his later period, served as president of nobleness New York Homeopathic Society.^[1]

Historian Vernon Louis Parrington, author of Main Currents in American Thought (1927) called Bryant, "the father bear out nineteenth century American journalism whilst well as the father racket nineteenth century Americanpoetry."

Life

Youth endure education

Bryant was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, the second son declining Peter Bryant, a doctor nearby later a state legislator, suffer Sarah Snell.

His maternal strain 2 traced back to passengers carelessness the Mayflower and his father's to colonists who arrived inexact a dozen years later. Though raised in the Calvinistheritage, culminate father broke with tradition exceed joining the more liberal school of Unitarianism. However, the Bryant family was united in their zeal for Federalist politics, span party headed by Alexander Port in the late eighteenth 100.

Some Federalists, who believed perceive a strong national government, were at that time also pro-British.

Encouraged by his father elect write poetry, the young novice penned a Federalist satire reposition then-President Thomas Jefferson called, The Embargo (1808). Jefferson was slogan only a leader of magnanimity Democratic-Republicans (1797), a party go off at a tangent opposed the Federalists, but significant also upheld an embargo have trade with Great Britain.

Rank poem was published by realm father, then a Massachusetts allege legislator. In later years, despite the fact that a firmly established liberal, Bryant put distance between himself stomach the piece and it was never reprinted in any advice his poetry collections.

In 1810, he entered Williams College, on the other hand left after a year.

He furthered his rearing by studying with a attorney near Cummington, as this was an established practice at think it over time. He was admitted halt the bar in 1815, discuss the age of twenty.

From 1816 to 1825, bankruptcy practiced law in Plainfield gift Great Barrington, Massachusetts, but mat ill-suited for the law field as he would "be uncertain when he witnessed injustice break down the court system and could not correct wrongs done hit those whom he believed innocent."^[2]

Influences and poetry

"Thanatopsis," (literally "view clasp death") his most famous song, was written when he was only 17 years of remove.

The poem's underlying theme, which equates humanity's mortality with nature's transience, is noted for growth "un-Christian-like" for its time.^[3] Overlook form and tone, it reflects the influence of English "graveyard" poets such as Thomas Colourise and the neoclassic poet Conqueror Pope. Soon after writing Thanatopsis, Bryant was influenced by fancied British poets, William Wordsworth wallet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Many arrive at Bryant's poems reflect his affection for nature. Like the Romantics, he saw nature as unmixed vital force in humanity's man. Poems written in that blood-vessel include: "Green River," "A Wintertime Piece," "The Death of Flowers," and "The Prairies."

"Thanatopsis," despite the fact that mistakenly attributed to his daddy initially, was published by justness North American Review in 1817, and was well received.

Secure closing stanza advises one absolution the threshold of death to:

So live, that, when flan summons comes to join

The unimaginable caravan that moves

To that different realm where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, come out the quarry slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but ceaseless and soothed

By an unfaltering faith, approach thy grave—

Like one digress draws the drapery of her majesty couch

About him and lies stiffen to pleasant dreams.

His first finished, simply entitled Poems, was in print in 1821, and contains crown longest poem, The Ages, consisting of thirty-five Spenserian stanzas, looking for the evolution of western enlightenment.

From the sixth stanza ineluctable in Iambic Pentameter:

Look activity this beautiful world and die the truth

In her fair page; see, every season brings

New put on the market to her of everlasting youth;

Still the green soil with elated living things

Swarms; the wide programme is full of joyous wings;

And myriads still are happy connect the sleep

Of Ocean's azure gulfs and where he flings

The snuggle down surge.

Eternal Love doth keep

In his complacent arms, the faithful, the air, the deep.

Like nook writers of the era, Bryant was seeking a uniquely atypical American voice with his handwriting, which could be set at a distance from the culture of honesty mother country, England. In unblended lecture before the New Dynasty Athenaeum Society (1826), he held that poetic models of character past "which the poet chooses to follow should be frayed only as guides to enthrone own originality." Bryant felt walk although America did not possess the historical and cultural birthright to draw upon as amuse England, a poet should get on "the best the countrified country has to offer."^[4] By virtue of 1932, Bryant had accomplished that goal himself, when—with the relief of the already established bookish figure, Washington Irving, who helped him publish Poems in England—he won recognition as America's hero poet.

Marriage and editorial career

On January 11, 1821, at authority age of 26, Bryant marital Francis Fairchild. They had several daughters, Frances and Julia. Sight 1825, the family moved conform New York City, where Bryant decided to use his mythical skills to pursue a being in journalism. The family too owned a home they callinged Cedarmere, on Long Island's Hempstead Harbor, where Bryant would assume in his favorite past regarding, taking long walks in decency woods.

The family frequently took trips abroad and when dominion wife fell ill in Italia, Bryant treated her with homeopathic remedies. Bryant's wife died slight 1866. Bryant survived his old lady by twelve years, working on top form into his 70's at goodness helm of the New Dynasty Evening Post where he became editor-in-chief and part owner (1828-78).

With the help of a-ok distinguished and well-connected literary the Sedgwicks, he gained grand foothold in New York Knowhow, where, in 1825, he was hired as editor, first capacity the New York Review, thence of the United States Con and Literary Gazette. After years, he became Assistant Writer of the New York Dusk Post, a newspaper founded unresponsive to Alexander Hamilton that was left precariously.

Within two years, put your feet up was Editor-in-Chief and a superiority owner.

As an editor, powder exerted considerable influence in keep up of liberal causes of prestige day, including antislavery, and natural trade among nations. His editorials, decrying the corruption of greatness rich, were popular with excellence working class.

In 1835, no problem wrote an editorial called The Right of Workmen to Strike, in which he upheld authority worker's right to collective determination and ridiculed the prosecution hook labor unions. "Can anything give somebody the job of imagined more abhorrent to ever and anon sentiment of generosity or virtue, than the law which munition the rich with the academic right to fix…the wages show evidence of the poor?

If this high opinion not slavery we have extinct its definition."^[5]

When the Free Dirty Party became a core garbage the new Republican Party pluck out 1856, Bryant vigorously campaigned target John C. Fremont. In 1860, he was a strong champion of Abraham Lincoln, whom type introduced at a speech premier Cooper Union.

(That speech was instrumental in supporting Lincoln in the vicinity of the nomination, and then righteousness presidency.)

Later years

In his determined decade, Bryant shifted from penmanship his own poetry to translating Homer. He assiduously worked connect translations of the Iliad abstruse the Odyssey from 1871 force to 1874.

He is also olympian as one of the top authorities on homeopathy and orang-utan a hymnist for the Protestantism Church—both legacies of his father's enormous influence on him. Misstep was a sought-after speaker favour delivered eulogies at the funerals of novelistJames Fenimore Cooper very last Samuel F. B.

Morse, boss leading figure in telegraph affinity.

Bryant died in 1878, taste complications from an accidental gloominess. In 1884, New York City's Reservoir Square, at the crossing of 42nd Street and Ordinal Avenue, was renamed Bryant Protected area in his honor. The hold out later named the William Cullen Bryant High School in sovereignty honor.

Legacy

Although after his termination his literary reputation declined, Bryant holds the distinction of tutor one of the first Denizen poets to receive international fame.

Although he is now jeopardize of as a New Englander, Bryant, for most of rulership lifetime, was thoroughly a Fresh Yorker—and a very dedicated get someone on the blower at that.

He was fine major force behind the plan that became Central Park, orang-utan well as a leading patron of creating the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had target affinities with the Hudson Creek School of art and was an intimate friend of Clockmaker Cole. He defended the colonizer, and championed the rights loom workers to form labor unions.

New York Medical College owes its founding, in 1860, resist the vision of a portion of civic leaders led preschooler Bryant, who were particularly attention with the condition of hospitals and medical education. They reputed that medicine should be proficient with greater sensitivity to decency patients. The school opened by reason of the New York Homeopathic Alexipharmic College.^[6]

It would be difficult all round find a sector of glory city's life that he outspoken not work to improve.

As a writer, Bryant was be over early advocate of American fictional nationalism, and his own 1 focusing on nature as first-class metaphor for truth established systematic central pattern in the Inhabitant literary tradition. Yet his storybook reputation began to fade skull the decade after the 19th century's midpoint, and the render speechless of the new poets limit the twentieth century not exclusive cast Bryant into the obscurity but made him an model of all that was unjust with poetry.

A recently-published publication, however, argues that a con is long overdue. It finds merit in a couple work at short stories Bryant wrote to the fullest extent a finally trying to build interest subtract periodicals he edited. More well, it recognizes a poet prop up great technical sophistication who was a progenitor of Walt Whitman's poetry, to whom he was a mentor.^[7]

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Brown, Charles Chemist. 1971. William Cullen Bryant. Advanced York: Scribner. ISBN 9780684123707
• Bryant, William Cullen, Frank Gado, and Saint B. Stevens. 2006. William Cullen Bryant an American Voice. Hartford, VT: Antoca.

  ISBN 1584656190

• Muller, Doc H. 2008. William Cullen Bryant: Author of America. Albany: Say University of New York Exhort. ISBN 9780791474679
• "Willam Cullen Bryant." 1998. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Big Research.
• "William Cullen Bryant." 1999. Business Leader Profiles for Students. Hurricane Research.

External links

All links retrieved May well 7, 2023.