William Cullen
Bryant
William
Cullen Bryant, (b. Nov. 3, 1794,
Cummington, Mass., U.S.—d. June 12,
1878, New York City), poet of nature,
best remembered for “Thanatopsis,” and
editor for 50 years of the New York
Evening Post.
A
descendant of early Puritan immigrants,
Bryant at 16 entered the sophomore class
of Williams College. Because of finances
and in hopes of attending Yale, he
withdrew without graduating. Unable to
enter Yale, he studied law under private
guidance at Worthington and at
Bridgewater and at 21 was admitted to
the bar. He spent nearly 10 years in
Plainfield and at Great Barrington as an
attorney, a calling for which he held a
lifelong aversion. At 26 Bryant married
Frances Fairchild, with whom he was
happy until her death nearly half a
century later. In 1825 he moved to New
York City to become coeditor of the New
York Review. He became an editor of the
Evening Post in 1827; in 1829 he became
editor in chief and part owner and
continued in this position until his
death. His careful investment of his
income made Bryant wealthy. He was an
active patron of the arts and letters.
The
religious conservatism imposed on Bryant
in childhood found expression in pious
doggerel; the political conservatism of
his father stimulated “The Embargo”
(1808), in which the 13-year-old poet
demanded the resignation of President
Jefferson. But in “Thanatopsis” (from
the Greek “a view of death”), which he
wrote when he was 17 and which made him
famous when it was published in The
North American Review in 1817, he
rejected Puritan dogma for Deism;
thereafter he was a Unitarian. Turning
also from Federalism, he joined the
Democratic party and made the Post an
organ of free trade, workingmen’s
rights, free speech, and abolition.
Bryant was for a time a Free-Soiler and
later one of the founders of the
Republican party. As a man of letters,
Bryant securely established himself at
the age of 27 with Poems (1821). In his
later years he devoted considerable time
to translations.
Bryant
will be remembered longest as the poet
of his native Berkshire hills and
streams in such poems as “Thanatopsis”
and “To a Waterfowl.”
