biography
| name: |
Whittier, John Greenleaf
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1807–92)
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| biography:
| Poet and writer, born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, USA. Although he had little formal education, he studied for one year at Haverhill Academy (1827) and then taught there (1827–8). He began writing poetry as a youth, but started making his living as a newspaper editor (1829–32). A devout Quaker, he thereafter directed much of his energies throughout the Civil War to promoting abolitionism, both as an editor of several anti-slavery periodicals, and through his poetry, such as his collection, Voice of Freedom (1846). He also spent one term in the Massachusetts legislature (1835–7) and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives (1842). He opposed the Mexican War, and was among those who proposed founding the Republican Party. A founder of the Atlantic Monthly (1857), he remained a contributor, and after the Civil War he lived (from 1876) in Amesburg and Denvers, MA. Although he wrote a fair amount of critical essays and some fiction, he was highly popular in his day as one of the so-called ‘household poets’, and several of his ballads and genre poems, such as ‘Barefoot Boy’ (1856), ‘Barbara Fritchie’ (1864), and ‘Snow-Bound’ (1866), survive as classic Americana. |
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