William Cullen Bryant By Briana Mateo

Early Life Father  WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born at Cummington, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794. His father was Peter Bryant, a physician of considerable literary culture, and a person who had traveled quite extensively . His Father was the one who encouraged him to write poems. Bryant developed an interest in poetry early in life. Under his father's tutelage, he emulated Alexander Pope and other Neo-Classic British poets. Mom  Bryant's mother was Miss Sarah Snell, of Mayflower stock, being a descendant of John Alden. Strict Puritanical discipline was the order of the day, hence the young poet's life did not fall in pleasant places, so far as recreations were concerned. While the children were held with a steady hand, their educational and moral interests were considered with conscientious earnestness

His well-established New England family was staunchly Federalist in politics and Calvinist in religion. Many of his early poems reflected the families strong political and religious views. Bryant's Federalist satire on Thomas Jefferson, The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times (1808), by a "Youth of Thirteen" was published through his father's influence. In later years the liberal, democratic, Unitarian Bryant understandably wished to forget this youthful indiscretion, and he did not reprint it in any of his collections.

Bryant entered Williams College in 1810 and left after a year. In 1811 he wrote the first draft of his best-known poem, "Thanatopsis" (literally, view of death), reflecting the influence of English "graveyard" poets such as Thomas Gray. His career as a poet was launched. Even so, it was not until 1832, when an expanded Poems was published in the U.S. and, with the assistance of Washington Irving, in Britain, that he won recognition as America's leading poet. On January 11, 1821, Bryant, still striving to build a legal career, married Frances Fairchild. Writing poetry could not financially sustain a family. From 1816 to 1825, he practiced law in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and supplemented his income with such work as service as the town's hog reeve. Distaste for pettifoggery and the sometimes absurd judgments pronounced by the courts gradually drove him to break with the profession.

In 1825, he was hired as editor, first of the New-York Review, then of the United States Review and Literary Gazette. But the magazines of that day usually enjoyed only an ephemeral life-span. After two years of fatiguing effort to breathe life into periodicals, he became Assistant Editor of the New-York Evening Post, a newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton that was surviving precariously. Within two years, he was Editor-in-Chief and a part owner. He remained the Editor-in-Chief for half a century (1828-78). Eventually, the Evening-Post became not only the foundation of his fortune but also the means by which he exercised considerable political power in his city, state, and nation.

In his last decade, Bryant shifted from writing his own poetry to translating Homer. He assiduously worked on the Illiad and The Oddessey from 1871 to 1874. He is also remembered as one of the principal authorities on homeopathy and as a hymnist for the Unitarian Church—both legacies of his father's enormous influence on him. Bryant died in 1878 of complications from an accidental fall suffered after participating in a Central Park ceremony honoring Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini.

 Work Cited  http://www.2020site.org/literature/william_bryant.html http://www.bookrags.com/biography/william-cullen-bryant/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cullen_Bryant