1.
William McGonagall
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William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish weaver, poet and actor. He won notoriety as a bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for. He wrote about 200 poems, including The Tay Bridge Disaster and The Famous Tay Whale, collections of his verse remain popular, with several volumes available today. McGonagall has been lampooned as the worst poet in British history, the chief criticisms are that he is deaf to poetic metaphor and unable to scan correctly. McGonagalls fame stems from the effects these shortcomings are considered to generate in his work. Scholars argue that his rhythms, weak vocabulary, and ill-advised imagery combine to make his work amongst the most unintentionally amusing dramatic poetry in the English language. His work is in a tradition of narrative ballads and verse written and published about great events and tragedies. In an age before radio and television, their voice was one way of communicating important news to an avid public, William McGonagalls parents, Charles and Margaret, were Irish. It has been suggested that McGonagall may have falsified his place of birth, McGonagall moved north and was apprenticed as a handloom weaver in Dundee, following in his fathers footsteps. In 1846, he married Jean King, they had five sons, despite the industrial revolution slowly making weavers obsolete, McGonagall appeared to prosper, as there was still need for skilled workers to perform tasks of great complexity. Before he showed an interest in poetry, he displayed a keenness for acting, though Mr Giles Theatre, the theatre was filled with his friends and fellow workers, anxious to see what they expected to be an amusing disaster. The play should have ended with Macbeths death, but McGonagall believed the actor playing Macduff was trying to upstage him, by the 1870s, McGonagall and his family were struggling. Work as a weaver was more difficult to find and his oldest daughter shamed the family by giving birth to an illegitimate child, Gilfillan, himself an untrained and poorly-reviewed polemic Christian preacher who occasionally dabbled in poetry, commented admiringly Shakespeare never wrote anything like this. McGonagall realised if he were to succeed as a poet, he required a patron and he received a letter of rejection, written by a royal functionary, thanking him for his interest. vii McGonagall took this as praise for his work. During a trip to Dunfermline in 1879, he was mocked by the Chief Templar, in July 1878, he walked from Dundee to Balmoral, a distance of about 60 miles over mountainous terrain and through a violent thunderstorm to perform for Queen Victoria. When he arrived, he announced himself as The Queens Poet, the guards informed him Youre not the Queens poet. McGonagall presented the letter but was refused entry and had to return home and these were popular, the people of Dundee possibly recognising that McGonagall was so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius. He met with the ire of the publicans, on one occasion being pelted with peas for reciting a poem about the evils of strong drink
2.
Grand Rapids, Michigan
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Grand Rapids is the second-largest city in Michigan, and the largest city in West Michigan. It is on the Grand River about 30 miles east of Lake Michigan, as of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 1,005,648, Grand Rapids is the county seat of Kent County, Michigan. A historic furniture-manufacturing center, Grand Rapids is home to five of the leading office furniture companies. Its more common nickname of River City refers to the landmark river for which it was named. The city and surrounding communities are diverse, based in the health care, information technology, automotive, aviation. Grand Rapids is the hometown of U. S. President Gerald Ford, for thousands of years, succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples occupied the area. Over 2000 years ago, people associated with the Hopewell culture occupied the Grand River Valley, later, a tribe from the Ottawa River traveled to the Grand River valley, fighting three battles with the Prairie Indians who were established in the area. The tribe later split, with the Chippewas settling in the lower peninsula, the Pottawatomies staying south of the Kalamazoo River. In 1740, an Ottawa man who would later be known as Chief Noonday, between 1761 and 1763, Chief Pontiac visited the area annually, gathering over 3,000 natives and asking them to volunteer to fight the British in Detroit, which would culminate into Pontiacs War. The Potawatomi attacked the Ottawa in 1765, attempting to take the Grand River territory but were defeated, by the end of the 1700s, there were an estimated 1,000 Ottawa in the Kent County area. After the French established territories in Michigan, Jesuit missionaries and traders traveled down Lake Michigan, at the start of the 19th century, European fur traders and missionaries established posts in the area among the Ottawa. They generally lived in peace, trading European metal and textile goods for fur pelts and they were French-speaking and Roman Catholic. They likely both spoke Ottawa, Madelines maternal ancestral language, La Framboise, whose mother was Ottawa and father French, later merged her successful operations with the American Fur Company. By 1810, Chief Noonday established a village on the west side of the river with about 500 Ottawa, madeline La Framboise retired the trading post to Rix Robinson in 1821 and returned to Mackinac. The first permanent European-American settler in the Grand Rapids area was Isaac McCoy, general Lewis Cass, who commissioned Charles Christopher Trowbridge to establish missions for Native Americans in Michigan, ordered McCoy to establish a mission in Grand Rapids for the Ottawa. In 1824, Baptist missionary Rev. L. Slater traveled with two settlers to Grand Rapids to perform work, the winter of 1824 proved to be difficult, with Slaters group having to resupply and return before the spring. Slater then erected the first settler structures in Grand Rapids, a log cabin for himself, in 1825, McCoy returned and established a missionary station
3.
English poetry
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This article focuses on poetry written in English from the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The article does not include poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, the earliest surviving English poetry, written in Anglo-Saxon, the direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the 7th century. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry and it is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the Rood was written before circa AD700, by and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by the manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth, beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and the Finnesburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from works to biblical paraphrase, elegies such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin, and numerous proverbs, riddles. With one notable exception, Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative verse for its structure, with the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1111 the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke predominantly Norman, and this became the language of courts, parliament. While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament, the reputation of Chaucers successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. A group of Scottish writers arose who were believed to be influenced by Chaucer. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland, the main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509 and it is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle. The introduction of printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas, the establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life
4.
Edward Lear
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Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, and is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. As an author, he is principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennysons poetry, Lear was born into a middle-class family at Holloway, North London, the penultimate of twenty-one children of Ann Clark Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear. He was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann,21 years his senior, owing to the familys limited finances, Lear and his sister were required to leave the family home and live together when he was aged four. Ann doted on Edward and continued to act as a mother for him until her death, Lear suffered from lifelong health afflictions. From the age of six he suffered frequent grand mal seizures, and bronchitis, asthma. Lear experienced his first seizure at a fair near Highgate with his father, the event scared and embarrassed him. Lear felt lifelong guilt and shame for his epileptic condition and his adult diaries indicate that he always sensed the onset of a seizure in time to remove himself from public view. When Lear was about seven years old he began to show signs of depression and he suffered from periods of severe melancholia which he referred to as the Morbids. He was the first major bird artist to draw birds from real live birds, Lears first publication, published when he was 19 years old, was Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots in 1830. One of the greatest ornithological artists of his era, he contributed to John Goulds works and was compared favourably with the naturalist John James Audubon. Unfortunately his eyesight deteriorated too much to work with precision on the fine drawings and etchings of plates used in lithography, thus he turned to landscape painting. Among other travels, he visited Greece and Egypt during 1848–49 and his landscape style often shows views with strong sunlight, with intense contrasts of colour. Between 1878 and 1883 Lear spent his summers on Monte Generoso and his oil painting The Plains of Lombardy from Monte Generoso is in the Ashmolean Museum in the English city of Oxford. Throughout his life he continued to paint seriously and he had a lifelong ambition to illustrate Tennysons poems, near the end of his life a volume with a small number of illustrations was published. In 1842 Lear began a journey into the Italian peninsula, travelling through the Lazio, Rome, Abruzzo, Molise, Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. In personal notes, together with drawings, Lear gathered his impressions on the Italian way of life, folk traditions, and the beauty of the ancient monuments. Of particular interest to Lear was the Abruzzo, which he visited in 1843, through the Marsica, at Castel di Sangro, Lear described the winter stillness of the mountains and the beautiful basilica
5.
George Moore (novelist)
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George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra and he originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day, as a naturalistic writer, he was amongst the first English-language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists, and was particularly influenced by the works of Émile Zola. George Moores family had lived in Moore Hall, near Lough Carra, the house was built by his paternal great-grandfather—also called George Moore—who had made his fortune as a wine merchant in Alicante. The novelists grandfather was a friend of Maria Edgeworth, and author of An Historical Memoir of the French Revolution and his great-uncle, John Moore, was president of the Province of Connacht in the short-lived Irish Republic of 1798 during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. George Henry was renowned as a landlord, fought to uphold the rights of tenants. His estate consisted of 5000 ha in Mayo, with a further 40 ha in County Roscommon, George Moore was born in Moore Hall in 1852. As a child, Moore enjoyed the novels of Walter Scott and he spent a good deal of time outdoors with his brother, Maurice George Moore, and also became friendly with the young Willie and Oscar Wilde, who spent their summer holidays at nearby Moytura. Oscar was to later quip of Moore, He conducts his education in public, for a while George was left at Cliffs stables until his father decided to send George to his alma mater facilitated by his winnings. Moores formal education started at St. Marys College, Oscott and he spent all of 1864 at home, having contracted a lung infection brought about by a breakdown in his health. His academic performance was poor while he was hungry and unhappy, in January 1865, he returned to St. Marys College with his brother Maurice, where he refused to study as instructed and spent time reading novels and poems. That December the principal, Spencer Northcote, wrote a report that, by the summer of 1867 he was expelled, for idleness and general worthlessness, and returned to Mayo. His father once remarked, about George and his brother Maurice, in 1868, Moores father was again elected MP for Mayo and the family moved to London the following year. He was freed from any burden of education when his father died in 1870, Moore, though still a minor, inherited the family estate that was valued at £3,596. He handed it over to his brother Maurice to manage and in 1873, on attaining his majority and it took him several attempts to find an artist who would accept him as a pupil. Monsieur Jullian, who had previously been a shepherd and circus masked man, at Académie Jullian he met Lewis Weldon Hawkins who became Moores flat-mate and whose trait, as a failed artist, show up in Moores own characters. While still in Paris his first book, a collection of poems called The Flowers of Passion, was self-published in 1877. The poems were derivative, maliciously reviewed by the critics who were offended by some of the depravities in store for moralistic readers and was withdrawn by Moore
6.
William Morris
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William Morris was an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist. Associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he played a significant role in propagating the early socialist movement in Britain. Born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a wealthy family, Morris came under the strong influence of medievalism while studying Classics at Oxford University. Webb and Morris designed a home, Red House, then in Kent. In 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others, in 1875, Morris assumed total control of the company, which was renamed Morris & Co. Although retaining a main home in London, from 1871 Morris rented the rural retreat of Kelmscott Manor, greatly influenced by visits to Iceland, with Eiríkr Magnússon he produced a series of English-language translations of Icelandic Sagas. In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to campaign against the damage caused by architectural restoration, in 1891 he founded the Kelmscott Press to publish limited-edition, illuminated-style print books, a cause to which he devoted his final years. Morris is recognised as one of the most significant cultural figures of Victorian Britain, though best known in his lifetime as a poet, founded in 1955, the William Morris Society is devoted to his legacy, while multiple biographies and studies of his work have seen publication. Many of the associated with his life are open to visitors, much of his work can be found in art galleries and museums. Morris was born at Elm House in Walthamstow, Essex, on 24 March 1834. Raised into a wealthy family, he was named after his father. His mother was Emma Morris, who came from Woodford Hall in Woodford, Essex and he also took rides through the Essex countryside on his pony, and visited the various churches and cathedrals throughout the country, marveling at their architecture. His father took him on visits outside of the county, for instance to Canterbury Cathedral, the Chiswick Horticultural Gardens, and to the Isle of Wight, where he adored Blackgang Chine. In February 1848 Morris began his studies at Marlborough College in Marlborough, Wiltshire and he despised his time there, being bullied, bored, and homesick. He did use the opportunity to many of the prehistoric sites of Wiltshire, such as Avebury and Silbury Hill. At Christmas 1851, Morris was removed from the school and returned to Water House, guy, Assistant Master at the nearby Forest School. In June 1852 Morris entered Oxford Universitys Exeter College, although since the college was full and he disliked the college and was bored by the manner in which they taught him Classics
7.
Coventry Patmore
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Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore was an English poet and critic best known for The Angel in the House, his narrative poem about an ideal happy marriage. The eldest son of author Peter George Patmore, Coventry Patmore was born at Woodford in Essex and was privately educated and he was his fathers intimate and constant companion and inherited from him his early literary enthusiasm. It was Coventrys ambition to become an artist and he showed much promise, earning the silver palette of the Society of Arts in 1838. In 1839 he was sent to school in France for six months, on his return, his father planned to publish some of these youthful poems, Coventry however had become interested in science, and poetry was set aside. In 1847 he married Emily Augusta Andrews, daughter of Dr. Andrews of Camberwell, Three daughters followed – Emily, Bertha and Gertrude, before their last child, a son, was born in 1860. He later returned to writing however, enthused by the success of Alfred Lord Tennyson, and in 1844 he published a volume of Poems. Patmore, distressed at its reception, bought up the remainder of the edition, what upset him most was a cruel review in Blackwoods Magazine, but the enthusiasm of his friends, together with their more constructive criticism, helped foster his talent. In his time at the British Museum Patmore was instrumental in starting the Volunteer Movement in 1852 and he wrote an important letter to The Times on the subject, and stirred up much martial enthusiasm among his colleagues. The four works were published together in 1863 and have come to symbolise the Victorian feminine ideal – which was not necessarily the ideal amongst feminists of the period, by 1861 the family was living in Elm Cottage, North End, Hampstead. On 5 July 1862 Emily died after a lengthy and lingering illness and this departure into criticism continued in 1879 with a volume of papers entitled Principle in Art, and again in 1893 with Religio Poetae. His second wife Marianne died in 1880, and in 1881 he married Harriet Robson from Bletchingley in Surrey and their son Francis was born in 1882. In later years he lived at Lymington, where he died in 1896 and he was buried in Lymington churchyard. A collected edition of Patmores poems appeared in two volumes in 1886, with a preface which might serve as the authors epitaph. I have written little, it runs, but it is all my best, I have never spoken when I had nothing to say, I have respected posterity, and should there be a posterity which cares for letters, I dare to hope that it will respect me. Spirituality informs his inspiration, the poetry is glowing and alive, the magnificent piece in praise of winter, the solemn and beautiful cadences of Departure, and the homely but elevated pathos of The Toys, are in their manner unsurpassed in English poetry. Patmore is today one of the least-known but best-regarded Victorian poets and his son Henry John Patmore also became a poet. London, George Bell and Sons,1889, courage in Politics and other Essays. William Barnes, the Dorset Poet, The Library Magazine, Vol. II, “Distinction, ” The Eclectic Magazine, Vol. LII,1890 Three Essayettes, The Eclectic Magazine, Vol. LVI, July/December 1892
8.
American poetry
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Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge, the history of American poetry is not easy to know. The received narrative of Modernism proposes that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were perhaps the most influential modernist English-language poets in the period during World War I. But this narrative leaves out African American and women poets who were published, by the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. There are 14 such writers whom we might on that basis call American poets, early examples include a 1616 testimonial poem on the sterling warlike character of Captain John Smith and Rev. One of the first recorded poets of the British colonies was Anne Bradstreet, the poems she published during her lifetime address religious and political themes. She also wrote tender evocations of home, family life and of her love for her husband, edward Taylor wrote poems expounding Puritan virtues in a highly wrought metaphysical style that can be seen as typical of the early colonial period. This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the written in the colonies during the 17th. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as a poet, a distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, a slave whose book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was one of the poets of her day, at least in the colonies. The 18th century saw an emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. The work of Rebecca Hammond Lard, although old, still apply to life in todays world. She writes about nature, not only the nature of environment, on the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the first place, as the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative and this can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London. The first significant poet of the independent United States was William Cullen Bryant, whose contribution was to write rhapsodic poems on the grandeur of prairies. Formed the Fireside Poets were a group of 19th-century American poets from New England, the poets primary subjects were the domestic life, mythology, and politics of the United States, in which several of the poets were directly involved. Other notable poets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Sidney Lanier, and James Whitcomb Riley
9.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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Thomas Bailey Aldrich was an American writer, poet, critic, and editor. He is notable for his editorship of The Atlantic Monthly, during which he published works by Charles W. Chesnutt. He was also known for his semi-autobiographical book The Story of a Bad Boy, and for his poetry, Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on November 11,1836. When Aldrich was a child, his father moved to New Orleans, after 10 years, Aldrich was sent back to Portsmouth to prepare for college. This period of his life is described in his semi-autobiographical novel The Story of a Bad Boy. Aldrich abandoned college preparations after his fathers death in 1849, at age 16, he entered his uncles business office in New York City in 1852 and became a constant contributor to the newspapers and magazines. From 1856 to 1859, Aldrich was on the staff of the Home Journal, during the Civil War, he was the editor of the New York Illustrated News. In 1865 Aldrich returned to New England, where he was editor in Boston for ten years for Ticknor, from 1881 to 1890, Aldrich was editor of the important Atlantic Monthly. As editor, he created tension with his publisher Henry Houghton by refusing to publish commissioned articles by his friends, when Houghton chastised Aldrich for turning down submissions from his friend Daniel Coit Gilman, Aldrich threatened to resign and finally did so in June 1890. Meanwhile, Aldrich continued his writing, both in prose and verse. He was well known for his form in poetry, critics believed him to show the influence of Robert Herrick. Aldrichs longer narrative or dramatic poems were not as successful, beginning with the collection of stories entitled Marjorie Daw and Other People, Aldrich wrote works of realism and quiet humor. His novels Prudence Palfrey, The Queen of Sheba, and The Stillwater Tragedy had more dramatic action, the first portrayed Portsmouth with the affectionate touch shown in the shorter humorous tale, A Rivermouth Romance. In An Old Town by the Sea, Aldrich commemorated his birthplace again, travel and description are the theme of From Ponkapog to Pesth. Aldrich married Lillian Woodman and had two sons, mark Twain apparently detested Aldrichs wife, writing in 1893, Lord, I loathe that woman so. She is an idiot—an absolute idiot—and does not know it, and her husband, the sincerest man that walks. Tied for life to this vacant hellion, this clothes-rack, this twaddling, blethering, driveling blatherskite, the Aldriches were close friends of Henry L. Pierce, former mayor of Boston and chocolate magnate. At his death in 1896, he willed them his estate at Canton, in 1901, Aldrichs son Charles, married the year before, was diagnosed with tuberculosis
10.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. A member of the Fireside Poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day and his most famous prose works are the Breakfast-Table series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. He was also an important medical reformer, in addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer, and inventor, and although he never practiced it, he received formal training in law. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Holmes was educated at Phillips Academy, after graduating from Harvard in 1829, he briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. He began writing poetry at an age, one of his most famous works. Following training at the medical schools of Paris, Holmes was granted his M. D. from Harvard Medical School in 1836. He taught at Dartmouth Medical School before returning to teach at Harvard and, for a time, Holmes retired from Harvard in 1882 and continued writing poetry, novels and essays until his death in 1894. Many of his works were published in The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine that he named, for his literary achievements and other accomplishments, he was awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities around the world. Holmess writing often commemorated his native Boston area, and much of it was meant to be humorous or conversational, some of his medical writings, notably his 1843 essay regarding the contagiousness of puerperal fever, were considered innovative for their time. He was often called upon to issue occasional poetry, or poems written specifically for an event, Holmes also popularized several terms, including Boston Brahmin and anesthesia. Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 29,1809 and his birthplace, a house just north of Harvard Yard, was said to have been the place where the Battle of Bunker Hill was planned. He was the first son of Abiel Holmes, minister of the First Congregational Church and avid historian, Sarah was the daughter of a wealthy family, and Holmes was named for his maternal grandfather, a judge. The first Wendell, Evert Jansen, left the Netherlands in 1640 and settled in Albany, also through his mother, Holmes was descended from Massachusetts Governor Simon Bradstreet and his wife, Anne Bradstreet, the first published American poet. From a young age, Holmes was small and suffered from asthma, when he was eight, he took his five-year-old brother, John, to witness the last hanging in Cambridges Gallows Lot and was subsequently scolded by his parents. After being exposed to such as John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Oliver Goldsmith. His first recorded poem, which was copied down by his father, was written when he was 13, although a talented student, the young Holmes was often admonished by his teachers for his talkative nature and habit of reading stories during school hours. He studied under Dame Prentiss and William Bigelow before enrolling in what was called the Port School, One of his schoolmates was future critic and author Margaret Fuller, whose intellect Holmes admired. Holmess father sent him to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Abiel chose Phillips, which was known for its orthodox Calvinist teachings, because he hoped his oldest son would follow him into the ministry
11.
Sidney Lanier
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Sidney Clopton Lanier was an American musician, poet and author. As a poet he sometimes, though not exclusively, used dialects, many of his poems are written in heightened, but often, archaic American English. He became a flautist and sold poems to publications and he eventually became a professor of literature at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Many schools, other structures and two lakes are named for him, Sidney Clopton Lanier was born February 3,1842, in Macon, Georgia, to parents Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary Jane Anderson, he was mostly of English ancestry. His distant French Huguenot ancestors immigrated to England in the 16th century and he began playing the flute at an early age, and his love of that musical instrument continued throughout his life. He attended Oglethorpe University, which at the time was near Milledgeville, Georgia and he graduated first in his class shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War. He fought in the American Civil War, primarily in the region of Virginia. Later, he and his brother Clifford served as pilots aboard English blockade runners, on one of these voyages, his ship was boarded. Refusing to take the advice of the British officers on board to don one of their uniforms and pretend to be one of them and he was incarcerated in a military prison at Point Lookout in Maryland, where he contracted tuberculosis. He suffered greatly from disease, then incurable and usually fatal. Shortly after the war, he taught briefly, then moved to Montgomery, Alabama. He was the regular organist at The First Presbyterian Church in nearby Prattville and he wrote his only novel, Tiger Lilies while in Alabama. This novel was partly autobiographical, describing a stay in 1860 at his grandfathers Montvale Springs resort hotel near Knoxville, in 1867, he moved to Prattville, at that time a small town just north of Montgomery, where he taught and served as principal of a school. He married Mary Day of Macon in 1867 and moved back to his hometown, after passing the Georgia bar, Lanier practiced as a lawyer for several years. During this period he wrote a number of poems, using the cracker and negro dialects of his day, about poor white. He traveled extensively through southern and eastern portions of the United States in search of a cure for his tuberculosis. While on one journey in Texas, he rediscovered his native and untutored talent for the flute. Unable to find work in New York City, Philadelphia, or Boston, he signed on to play flute for the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore, Maryland and he taught himself musical notation and quickly rose to the position of first flautist
