Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
4.7 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
(1794–1878)
William Cullen lived and wrote at
the cusp of the Romantic era; indeed,
he’s credited with giving an American
slant to the English Romantic poetry
heralded by William Wordsworth (1770–
1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
(1772–1834) Lyrical Ballads (1799).
Like Wordsworth, Bryant appreciated
emulated, the neoclassical poetry of
Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson
(1709–1784). Bryant also responded to
the so-called graveyard school of poetry
of Thomas Gray (1716–1771), poetry
that linked emotion with observation
of the natural world. From Wordsworth
and Coleridge, Bryant awoke to the
power of nature itself to teach, guide,
Image 4.5 | William Cullen Bryant
and inspire the individual’s developing Artist | John Wesley Jarvis
Source | Wikimedia Commons
mind and spirit. His poetry especially
License | Public Domain
reected his life-long love of nature,
especially in his use of scenic nature imagery.
From his childhood on, he was exposed to the wonders of the American landscape;
he was born in Cummington, Massachusetts. With his father, Dr. Peter Bryant
(1767–1820), who was a naturalist, Bryant took many walking excursions into the
surrounding woods and the Berkeshire foothills. His father’s library also provided
Bryant with ample reading material (which he read with the help of his uncle, who
schooled him in the classics). His father encouraged Bryant’s early literary bent,
including having Bryant’s pro-Federalist poem The Embargo; or, Sketches of the
Times: A Satire by a Youth of Thirteen (1808) published as a pamphlet.
In 1810, Bryant entered Williams College. There, he continued to write, drafting
“Thanatopsis,” which would become his most important poem. After learning that his
family could not support his college education, Bryant studied law and was admitted
to the bar in 1815. From 1816 to 1825, he practiced law at Great Barrington, married
Frances Fairchild, began a family, and still wrote poetry. Upon publishing a revised
“Thanatopsis,” (1817), he gained enough critical attention and admiration to turn to
writing professionally. In 1821, he published his collected Poems. In 1825, he moved to
New York to edit the New-York Review and Atheneum Magazine then later the New
York Evening Post, an important national newspaper that he eventually served as
editor-in-chief. In New York, Bryant became an important (if not the most important)
man of letters, socializing with such well-known writers as James Fenimore Cooper. At
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