William Cullen Bryant was born in Cummington, Massachusetts on November 3, 1794.
His home in Cummington was surrounded by brooks, rivers, rocky hills, and woods.
Bryant’s mother was Sarah Snell Bryant. His father, Doctor Peter Bryant, was a
strict Calvinist who loved poetry, music, and was also one of the strongest men
in the countryside. As a child, Bryant was sickly, but his father’s training
turned him into a husky boy. Bryant attended the district schools until he was
twelve. Then, he studied Greek and Latin. In 1810, Bryant spent a year at
William’s College. In 1811, Bryant began to study law, and in 1815 he was
admitted to the bar. After some private study, he practiced law in Barrington,
Massachusetts. Poetry wasn’t a practical occupation for Bryant, so he
continued working as a lawyer and a justice of the peace in Massachusetts until
he moved to New York City in 1825. Considered a child-prodigy, Bryant published
his first poem at age ten and his first book at age thirteen. All of Bryant’s
early poetry was published in the early nineteenth century, and he found his
subject in the American landscape, especially that of New England. Bryant’s
first draft of “Thanatopsis”, an elegy, was written between 1813 and 1814,
when Bryant was seventeen years old. Other early poems include “To
Waterfowl”, Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood”, and “The Yellow
Violet”, which were all written before he was twenty-one. A few years after
Bryant wrote “Thanatopsis” and “To a Waterfowl”, Doctor Peter Bryant
found them in a desk and sent them to The North American Review. Bryant’s
father helped to publish Bryant’s first book, Embargo. Most materials
published between 1818-1825 were previously written poems now submitted, since
Bryant was known for editing his work for quite some time before submissions.
“Thanatopsis” first appeared in The North American Review in 1817.
Interested in technique, Bryant published “On the Use of Trisyllabic Feet in
Iambic Verse” in 1819. In 1821, Bryant was invited to read the Phi Beta Kappa
poem at the Harvard College commencement. Also in 1821, he married Frances
Fairchild. In 1825, Bryant moved his family to New York City to become editor of
The New York Review. By this year, he was known as the finest poet in the United
States. In 1826, after a year as editor on The New York Review, Bryant became an
editor-in-chief at The Evening Post, a New York paper. The Evening Post was
established by the “Federalist Party Stalwart”, Alexander Hamilton. Bryant
had great influence on The New York Evening Post. In fact, Bryant’s editorials
made The Evening Post one of the most respected papers in the country. At first,
Bryant stood with the Democrats on national affairs, but he finally broke with
them on the slavery issue. By 1840, Bryant had largely abandoned poetry to
become one of the country’s leading advocates for the abolition of slavery. In
1856, Bryant assembled the paper to Republican cause. In 1863, The Evening Post
and Bryant influenced Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation
Proclamation. Also, Bryant introduced Abraham Lincoln before an audience at
Cooper Union in New York. In Bryant’s later life, he traveled widely, made
many public speeches, and continued to write a few poems, such as “The Death
of Flowers”, “To a Fringed Gentian”, and “The Battlefield”. After the
death of his wife in 1866, Bryant resumed translating The Iliad, completed in
1870, and thereafter, The Odyssey, completed in 1872. In 1876 he published a
final collected edition. Bryant continued to pursue editorial work for a total
of fifty years. In his book Lectures on Poetry, which was delivered in 1825 and
published in 1884, he emphasized the values of simplicity, original imagination,
and morality. In 1878, after attending the dedication of a bust of himself in
New York, William Cullen Bryant died, rich and successful. Conclusion Although
William Cullen Bryant led a prosperous life, he is regarded as falling somewhat
short of his potential. Because of this, his place in literary history is not
altogether secure. Bryant lacked epics, elegies, and verse drama in his poetry,
causing critics to not give him categorical honors. Nevertheless, even though he
published very little as he became more and more involved in the journalistic
life, he was remarkably popular in his time. He was even at one time named as a
candidate for President. Introduction William Cullen Bryant was a defender of
human rights and a supporter of free trade, the abolition of slavery, and other
improvements. Bryant was also an advocate of the hands off economic policy also
known as “Laissez-Faire”. He is best known for his early poem, “Thanatopsis”,
which granted him universal recognition. Other well known poems include “To a
Waterfowl” and “The Prairies”. Bryant also translated “The Iliad” and
“The Odyssey”.