Stephen Vincent Benét



Stephen Vincent Benét (July 22, 1898 – March 13, 1943) was an American poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By the Waters of Babylon".

Early life
Benét was born into an Army family in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His grandfather and namesake led the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, 1874–1891, with the rank of brigadier general.

Most of his miserable young life he stayed in California. At about age ten, Benét was sent to the Hitchcock Military Academy. He hated it so he graduated from The Albany Academy in Albany, New York and Yale University, where he was "the power behind the Yale Lit", according to Thornton Wilder, a fellow member of the Elizabethan Club. Benet published his book at age 17. He was awarded an M.A. in English upon submission of his third volume of poetry in lieu of a thesis. Benet was also a part-time contributor for the early Time magazine.

Man of letters
Benet helped solidify the place of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and the Yale University Press during his decade-long judgeship of the competition. Benet published the first volumes of James Agee, Muriel Rukeyser, Jeremy Ingalls, and Margaret Walker.

Death and legacy
Benét died of a heart attack in New York City, on March 13, 1943, at the age of 44.

Recognition
Benet won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his 1928 narrative poem, John Brown's Body. He was also awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for Western Star, an unfinished narrative poem on the settling of America.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1931.

Benet's fantasy short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937), won an O. Henry Award. The story furnished the material for Scratch, a one-act opera by Douglas S. Moore. The story was filmed in 1941 and shown originally under the title All That Money Can Buy. Benét also wrote a sequel, Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent, in which real-life historic figure Daniel Webster encounters the Leviathan of biblical legend.

Benét maintained a home (commonly referred to as Benét House), in Augusta, Georgia. Part of Augusta College (now Augusta State University), it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

In popular culture
Benet adapted the guardian myth of the rape of the Sabine Women into the story The Sobbin' Women, which in turn was adapted into the movie musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

John Brown's Body was staged on Broadway in 1953, in a three-person dramatic reading featuring Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, and Raymond Massey, and directed by Charles Laughton.

In 2009, The Library of America selected Benét’s story “The King of Cats” for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub.

Publications

 * Five Men and Pompey, 1915
 * The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun (Yale University Prize Poem), 1917
 * Young Adventure, 1918 (full text)
 * Heavens and Earth, 1920
 * The Beginnings of Wisdom, 1921
 * Young People's Pride, 1922
 * Jean Huguenot, 1923
 * The Ballad of William Sycamore, 1923
 * King David, 1923
 * Nerves, 1924 (with John Farrar)
 * That Awful Mrs. Eaton, 1924 (with John Farrar)
 * Tiger Joy, 1925
 * The Mountain Whippoorwill: How Hill-Billy Jim Won the Great Fiddler's Prize, 1925 (full text)
 * Spanish Bayonet, 1926
 * John Brown's Body, 1928
 * The Barefoot Saint, 1929
 * The Litter of Rose Leaves, 1930
 * Abraham Lincoln, 1930 (screenplay with Gerrit Lloyd)
 * Ballads and Poems, 1915–1930, 1931
 * A Book of Americans, 1933 (with Rosemary Carr Benét)
 * James Shore's Daughter, 1934
 * The Burning City, 1936 (includes 'Litany for Dictatorships')
 * The Magic of Poetry and the Poet's Art, 1936
 * By the Waters of Babylon, 1937
 * The Headless Horseman, 1937
 * Thirteen O'Clock, 1937
 * Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer, 1938
 * Tales Before Midnight, 1939
 * The Ballad of the Duke's Mercy, 1939
 * Nightmare at Noon, 1940
 * Elementals, 1940-41 (broadcast)
 * Freedom's Hard-Bought Thing, 1941 (broadcast)
 * Listen to the People, 1941
 * A Summons to the Free, 1941
 * Cheers for Miss Bishop, 1941 (screenplay with Adelaide Heilbron, Sheridan Gibney)
 * They Burned the Books, 1942
 * Selected Works, 1942 (2 vols.)
 * Short Stories, 1942
 * Nightmare at Noon, 1942 (in The Treasury Star Parade, ed. by William A. Bacher)
 * A Child is Born, 1942 (broadcast)
 * They Burned the Books, 1942 (broadcast)

These works were published posthumously:


 * Western Star, 1943 (unfinished)
 * Twenty Five Short Stories, 1943
 * America, 1944
 * O'Halloran's Luck and Other Short Stories, 1944
 * We Stand United, 1945 (radio scripts)
 * The Bishop's Beggar, 1946
 * The Last Circle, 1946
 * Selected Stories, 1947
 * From the Earth to the Moon, 1958