Richard Henry Stoddard

Richard Henry Stoddard (July 2, 1825 - May 12, 1903) was an American critic and poet.

Biography

Richard Henry Stoddard was born on July 12, 1825, in Hingham, Massachusetts. [Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. "The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States". New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 49. ISBN 0195031865] He spent most of his boyhood in New York City, where he became a blacksmith and later an iron moulder, but in 1849 he gave up his trade and began to write for a living. He contributed to the "Union Magazine", the "Knickerbocker Magazine", "Putnam's Monthly Magazine" and the "New York Evening Post". In 1853 Nathaniel Hawthorne helped him to secure the appointment of inspector of customs of the Port of New York.

He was confidential clerk to George B. McClellan in the New York dock department in 1870-1872, and city librarian of New York in 1874-1875; literary reviewer for the "New York World" (1860-1870); one of the editors of "Vanity Fair"; editor of the "Aldine" (1869-1874), and literary editor of the Mail and Express (1880-1903). He died in New York on the May 12, 1903.

More important than his critical was his poetical work, which at its best is sincere, original and marked by delicate fancy, and felicity of form; and his songs have given him a high and permanent place among American lyric poets. His wife, Elizabeth Drew Stoddard was also a novelist.

Bibliography

As editor

*"The Loves and Heroines of the Poets" (1861)
*"Melodies and Madrigals, Mostly from the old English Poets" (1865)
*"The Late English Poets" (1865), selections
*Griswold's "Poets and Poetry of America" (1872)
*"Female Poets of America" (1874)
*"The Bric-a-Brac Series", in 10 vols (1874-1876)
*"English Verse", in 5 vols edited with WJ Linton (1883)
*four editions of Poe's works, with a memoir (1872-1894)

As poet

*"Footprints" (1849), privately printed and afterwards suppressed
*"Poems" (1852)
*"Adventures in Fairyland" (1853)
*"Town and Country" (1857)
*"The Story of Little Red Riding Hood" (1864)
*"Songs of Summer" (1857)
*"The King's Bell" (1862), one of his most popular narrative poems
*"Abraham Lincoln: A Horatian Ode" (1865)
*"The Book of the East" (1867)
*"Poems" (1880), a collective edition
*"The Lion's Cub, with Other Verse" (1890)

Prose

*"Life, Travels and Books of Alexander von Humboldt" (1860)
*"Under the Evening Lamp" (1892), essays dealing mainly with the modern English poets
*"Recollections Personal and Literary" (1903), edited by Ripley Hitchcock

External links

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References